SHILLONG: Doordarshan Kendra Shillong organised an in-house discussion at Laitkor office to deliberate on the challenges faced by public broadcasters in having to shoulder the additional burden of generating revenue for programmes, ever since Prasar Bharati was created in November 1997.
Patricia Mukhim, Editor, The Shillong Times, was invited to the function to do a brainstorm on the way forward.
Sixty-six kendras in other states and union territories also participated.
T Hynniewta, Director (Engineering wing) and Head of Office spoke of the four key challenges of Doordarshan’s functioning as marked out by the former CEO of Prasar Bharati Jawhar Sircar who demitted office in October 2016.
Sircar had spoken of the decline in viewership, the programme content, and a slump in revenue generation which poses the problem of sustainability of this public broadcaster and how to make DDK relevant. Hynniewta said DDK now has to compete with private television channels which have Direct to Home (DTH) facilities and whose revenue models are based on market values whereas DDK has commitment to public values which includes doing programmes that are of public concern in the areas of health, education, connectivity and other such issues that afflict people.
Moreover, the strength of DDK is that it broadcasts in the local language. Hynniewta pointed out that DDK now has to compete with other media which has live streaming facilities on the digital terrestrial mode. He hoped that DDK too would soon mount the DTH platform.
“It is true that our morale at this moment is low as we are challenged by the competitive edge of commercial television but we have to meet this new challenge in order to survive.”
Derrick Pariat, Head of Programmes enthused the staff to work with greater passion since DDK has an expensive set-up which most private television news channels don’t have.
“DDK still believes in discretion when airing stories of accidents. We exercise absolute discretion and don’t show the gory aspects of death by accident or violence. We also do not lack creative minds for content creation and till date we have maximum coverage population wise,” Pariat said adding that the Shillong Kendra needs strengthening by way of an OB van and to migrate to the DTH platform since there is so much stress on digital technology. He said that DTH technology would help them enter more homes and gain more viewership.
Patricia Mukhim exhorted the Shillong DDK team to work with greater passion since the challenge is to cope with the rapidly changing times. “Today in this country every day a channel is born and DDK has to compete for eyeballs with all of these commercial channels. If DDK does not reinvent itself and the staff is stuck in a comfort zone, they would soon become redundant in the same way that technology becomes redundant very rapidly today,” Mukhim said. She asked the DDK team to negotiate for greater flexibility in programming so as to be able to create public value outside the designated space since social media is today the greatest challenge to traditional media.
