The Hindu Business Line : Prasar Bharati eyes 5 m DTH subscribers by year-end

The organisation's CEO Mr K. S. Sarma, in an interview to Business Line, said over 3 million have opted for the service until now, and the response has been "beyond our expectations."

About 10 per cent of this has come from Tamil Nadu, with Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Gujarat also accounting for good numbers, he said, adding that the subscriber base has predominantly been non-urban.

When asked whether private channels will agree to Prasar Bharti's proposal to charge carriage fees for its DTH platform, he said, "If they don't accept it, they might have to get off the platform."

Apart from Doordarshan's own channels, the DTH service offers private channels such as Sun TV, Star Utsav, BBC World, Aaj Tak, among others, as also a slew of AIR stations.

Mr Sarma also said the impending launch of Star's and Sun Network's DTH operations wouldn't weaken Doordarshan's market. "Even if they have their own platform, they may like to be on our platform because all others would need monthly payments. Ours doesn't."

Mr Sarma, who was in Chennai post a visit to the Andaman & Nicobar islands for a conference of AIR's station directors, said that with Prasar Bharati staffers wary of serving in tsunami-hit Andaman & Nicobar Islands, the broadcaster plans to reduce the period of posting there, offering one-year tenures rather than two or three.

"Nobody wants to go there. We are thinking of making it a station with only one-year tenure, so we can incentivise more people to go there," said Mr Sarma. The relaxation is likely to apply for postings in Jammu & Kashmir and North-East too. "There seems to be no other way," he said.

The public broadcaster also wants to improve the islanders' access to local content. As of now, the Port Blair station of Doordarshan runs one hour of local content daily, which other islands can't access because they are serviced by unmanned very low power transmitters (VLPTs). So, they will have access only to the national feed of Doordarshan, as "VLPTs can look toward only one satellite."

But Prasar Bharati plans to overcome the problem by "turning them through remote control, electronically."

"In all the VLPTs in the island, and everywhere else in the country, I am trying to have a remote-controlled turning of the dish. So that when Port Blair telecasts local content, they (the rest of the islands) receive Port Blair programmes and when Port Blair closes, they receive national programmes."

The master control room is likely to be at Chennai or Port Blair.

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