ELECTRONIC MEDIA

AKASHVANI
Broadcasting started in India in 1927 with two privately-owned transmitters at Bombay and Calcutta. Government took over the transmitters in 1930 and started operating them under the name of Indian Broadcasting Service. It was changed to All India Radio (AIR) in 1936 and it also came to be known as Akashvani from 1957. AIR is serving as an effective medium to inform and educate people besides providing healthy entertainment.

NETWORK
At the time of Independence there were six radio stations. All India Radio presently has 232 radio stations and 374 transmitters which provide radio coverage to 99.16 percent of the population and reaches 91.82 percent area of the country. AIR has now been brought under Prasar Bharti, an autonomous statutory corporation set-up under the Prasar Bharti (Broadcasting Corporation of India) Act, 1990. The primary objective of the corporation is to organize and conduct public broadcasting services to inform, educate and entertain the public and to ensure a balanced development of broadcasting on Radio & TV.

EXPANSION OF FM SERVICES
In view of the superior quality of FM broadcasts it is giving popularity in the country. AIR has also therefore undertaken to expand its FM network to achieve about 50 percent population coverage after the completion of ongoing Tenth plan. Presently, 149 FM channels are working.

DOORDARSHAN TODAY
The Doordarshan’s network consists of (i) 66 Doordarshan Kendra (Studio Centres); (ii)1412 transmitters ; (iii) 31 channels made up of (a) 5 all India channels (DD-1, DD-News, DD-Bharati, DD sports)and DD-Rajya Sabha (b) 1 International Channel (DD-India), (c) 11 regional language satellite channel (Assamese North east, Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Kashmiri, Malayalam, Marathi, Oriya, Punjabi, Tamil and Telugu), (d) 12 State network channels (Bihar, Chhatisgarh, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttarakhand, Tripura, Mizoram, Meghalaya and Uttar Pradesh). Doordarshan has a three-tier programme service-National, Regional and Local.

The emphasis in the programmes in the National Service is on events and issues of interest to the entire nation.
The programmes in the regional service focus on events and issues of interest to the people of that particular state.
The Local service caters to the needs of the populace living in the areas falling within the reach of a particualr transmitter through area specific programmes in the local languages and dialects.

THE EARLY YEARS
The first telecast came from a makeshift studio in the Akashvani Bhavan, New Delhi on 15 September 1959. A transmitter of 500 W power could carry the signals up to 25 km from Delhi. The regular service with a News bulletin was started in 1965. Television went on a second city, Mumbai, only in 1972 and by 1975 Calcutta, Chennai,Srinagar, Amritsar and Lucknow had television stations, too.