Union Minister for Information & Broadcasting Anurag Thakur informed the Rajya Sabha on Thursday that there has been no decline in the viewership of state broadcaster, Doordarshan (DD). Mr. Thakur was replying to a question by Rajya Sabha Member of Parliament (MP) from Bihar, Akhilesh Prasad Singh.
Mr. Thakur elaborated that inspite of the increase in the number of private television channels and the resulting fragmentation of audience, there has been no decline in viewership of the state-owned broadcaster. He added this was also because many private television channels continued to relay DD’s content.
Operations
Mr. Thakur informed Rajya Sabha that Prasar Bharti, the public service broadcaster, presently operates 36 DD channels in standard definition (SD) and three in high-definition (HD). Further, it operates 51 co-branded educational channels.
The Union Minister also apprised the Upper House of the numerous initiatives taken by Prasar Bharti to spurt viewership. These include airing iconic serials such Ramayana and Mahabharat during the lockdown period in 2020, live broadcast of all sporting events of national importance on DD Sports, segmenting DD India exclusively for English news and DD News for Hindi news, together with the launch of a dedicated entertainment channel DD Retro and live streaming of major live events.
Viewership debate
According to data furnished by the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting on December 31, DD channels across the country, combined, recorded a viewership exceeding 6 billion.
Mr. Thakur, quoting data from Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC), said the Gross Unique Viewership for DD channels, operating in SD, stood at 684.9 million in 2021 compared to 747.0 million in 2020. This translates to a fall of 8.31% per cent in viewership. The data contains viewership numbers for DD News, DD India and DD National up till Oct. 2, 2020 only.
I&B Ministry’s report in December 2021 had mentioned that the ‘watch time’ in 2021 for YouTube channels of Doordarshan and All India Radio (AIR) combined, summed up to be 94 million hours.
The Union Minister pointed out that the state-broadcaster's coverage of the Republic Day Celebrations this year garnered more views on its YouTube network than its TV network. Viewership on the TV Network stood at 2.3 crore, whereas YouTube clocked a viewership of 2.6 crore. “This was further exponentially amplified to a total of more than 3.2 billion Television Viewing Minutes by more than 180 channels across the country which aired these Doordarshan visuals from 9:30 A.M. in the morning till noon,” he elaborated.
Acquiring revenues
Doordarshan’s commercial revenue fell 21.9% to Rs 272.61 crore in 2020-21 on a year-over-year basis. The data is inclusive of revenues from both Government and non-Government advertising. Noteworthy, however, is the state-broadcaster earned more from non-government advertising as compared to the previous two years which reflected an opposite trend.
In 2020-21, the state-broadcaster earned Rs 132.97 crore from government advertising and Rs 139.64 crore from non-government advertising.
In 2019-20, its cumulative revenue stood at Rs 348.83 crore, of which Rs 233.08 crore was acquired from government advertising.
In 2018-19, it clocked a cumulative revenue of Rs 623.84 crore, which includes Rs 496.41 crore from government-advertising and Rs 127.43 crore from non-Government advertising.
Monetisation and upscaling operations
Prasar Bharti, in Oct. 2021, had decided to e-auction archival and premium content of AIR, DD and its new units for monetisation. The policy annexure mentioned that premium content was to be auctioned for a period of maximum one year and archival content for a period of at least five years.
Further, in Feb. 2021, it had inked an agreement with PSM (the official state media of Maldives) for collaboration and capacity building in the broadcasting space.
Earlier, Mr. Thakur had apprised the Lok Sabha that the Prasar Bharti was provided Rs 2,379.24 crore between the financial year 2014-15 till Dec. 31 last year. This was in the form of grants-in-aid (non-salary) under Central sector scheme ‘Broadcasting Infrastructure and Network Development’ (BIND).
