Doordarshan is going down

Yikes, haven't blogged for over a month. I really ought to be more regular. Any how, my search for a topic has come to an end. After messing up all the TV related questions in an entertainment quiz, I have decided to write on the declining state of Doordarshan.

For those who haven't lived in India, Doordarshan(DD) is the state-owned public broadcaster. In fact, before the arrival of cable television, DD was TV. In the early days, DD was a godsend to the Indian public who had never seen a TV. It had a nice, balanced selection of programs, like a weekly Hindi film, some decent serials, and on Sundays, "I love Lucy".

However, after the arrival of cable television, DD went into terminal decline. The quality of programming, which had already declined, dropped further because of lack of advertising revenue. Nobody bothered with watching DD National and DD Metro, now that there were channels like Star Plus and Zee.

However, DD still got all India's home tests and one-day matches. Now, even this is being taken away, and the only reason DD viewers still get cricket is because of the courts.

Now, they are so down in the dumps that they don't cut serials where they are sure of making at least some money, for sports events like the Olympics for which they get the rights and then proceed to transmit on DD Sports, which is a cable channel.

At least, previously they used to show a one-hour highlights package, but that was not there for the 2006 Winter Olympics. This was irritating, to say the least. This is probably due to the fact that they have a news channel, DD News, in place of DD Metro.

There was a failed attempt to rework DD Metro, with some new content that they got with help from Channel 9 of Australia. But, that flopped after a while. Then, they tried to resuscitate their old serials. But, that failed too, and they dropped DD Metro for Dd News.

However, let's hope that there is some hope for the beleaguered broadcaster. The choice of movies has improved. Previously, it used to be one reasonably good(or relatively recent) movie on Friday, and an average(or, if you're lucky, a classic) movie on Saturday. Now, it's 2 reasonably good, recent movies on Friday and Saturday, and a classic movie on Sunday afternoon.