Link to the video trailer here.

After attaining freedom from British rule, Indian leaders had their task cut out. Mass media was envisioned as a vital ingredient in moving a nation towards these goals. Within this framework, the role of television was clearly defined. First, television was to be a medium of education that would promote economic and social development. Second, it would function under direct government control as private participation would encourage consumerist values and beliefs (Singhal and Rogers: 2001). Television, in this phase, was considered a pedagogic tool. This thinking pervaded the broadcasting sector right up to the Indira Gandhi years.

Ninan (1995) remarks that Indira Gandhi’s association with Indian television, first as Minister of Information and Broadcasting (1964-66) and later as Prime Minister (1966-77 and 1980-84), marked a change in the state’s relationship with the medium. Indira Gandhi believed in using television as the state’s visual messenger. The messenger was used to showcase the government’s achievements and tide over critical voices, particularly during days of emergency.

During the National Emergency (1975-77), Indira’s government took this to its hegemonic extreme when the media was made completely ineffective by the government. Television worked as a government mouthpiece during the emergency. The misuse of television and radio, and press censorship led to widespread call for press freedom from journalists, civil society, academicians, and political parties. The B.G.Verghese Committee was set up to look into the issue of autonomy of AIR and Doordarshan. However, the political uncertainty during the late seventies, at the centre, ensured that the issue of autonomy failed to see the light of the day for a long time.

Doordarshan came into existence as a separate television organisation in 1976 but within the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. This was also the time when advertising was allowed on television. Until the advent of advertising, Doordarshan had been funded exclusively by TV licenses and allocations from the national budget. But later, TV licensing was abolished, and advertising was to fill the budgetary shortfall. This policy change impacted the programming content on Doordarshan. The educational fare of the sixties was supplemented by large a variety of other programmes like sports, news, feature films, musical shows, plays, comedies, quiz etc. The entertainment mode of programming started attracting advertisers to the medium. Now, the state envisioned television as a tool for education and a tool for education and entertainment.

The scheme of ‘national programming’ in the eighties incorporated both these goals in its fold.  As part of this exercise, the first Indian soap opera, Hum Log, was aired on national television on 15^th July 1984. It was the first attempt to blend entertainment with the promotion of social values through television. Hum Log set a precedent for similar shows like Buniyaad, Nukaad, Yeh Jo Hai Zindagi that hit the screen subsequently. Feature films based on musical shows like Chitrahar and Chitramala were also instant hits among audiences. This was also the phase where the two most popular epics- Ramayan and Mahabharta were aired for the first time.

Studies by Mitra (1993), Mankekar (1998) and Rajagopal (2003) showcase how the televization of these Hindu epics became a rallying point for the consolidation of Hindutva politics in India. Within the news genre, private producers like Prannoy Roy and Vinod Dua marked their television entry during this period. Prannoy Roy, initially, came up with an election analysis. His production house, New Delhi Television Network (NDTV), and Doordarshan and the National Informatics Center, Delhi, worked together for the coverage of the Tamil Nadu assembly election in 1989. Successive national elections followed this in 1989 and 1991. Trends in voting, seat share, positioning of political parties were discussed and debated in special election shows.

In 1991, an acute fiscal crisis led to the opening of the Indian economy. Steps like lowering and simplifying import tariffs and quotas imposed to protect domestic industries, removing licensing raj, and providing incentives for exports and foreign investment were undertaken. To show its utmost commitment to liberalisation, the Indian government allowed the entry of foreign players into the broadcasting sector (Ghosh 1998). However, this decision was laced with its own set of apprehensions. First, the state perceived a threat to its national sovereignty from a new source- translational satellite television. Page and Crawley (2001) argue that the use of satellite for transmitting airwaves was not a novel experiment in Indian soil. But the intrusion of private international television broadcasters into the field, which was always assumed to be a national prerogative, was highly unwelcome. Broadcasting institutions were entrenched as a national monopoly. The government’s commitment to liberalisation reduced its monopolistic hold. Second, the flow of externally mediated information and alien cultural influences did cause uneasiness among the corridors of power in India. The fears of the dilution of Indian cultural values also led to invoking phrases like a cultural invasion, westernisation, Americanization.

The government and policymakers felt that western programming would corrupt Indian sensibilities. Instead, the government sought to give a befitting response to the challenge by foreign broadcasters by bringing in changes in its programming and advertising policy. The government allowed Doordarshan to expand its reach by multiplying the number of channels available to national and regional viewers and increasing the number of entertainment programmes to be broadcast. The launch of DD Metro as an entertainment-centric channel was part of this endeavour. As part of its entertainment package- fictions, serials, musical shows, sports, films, talk shows, youth programmes were regularly aired.

Asthana (2013) argues that the rise of sponsored entertainment programmes in the state broadcaster Doordarshan indicated a shift from state-led developmentalism to market-based consumerism. While a certain form of the entrenched state capital was visible in broadcasting until 1982, the seven-year period 1983-90 and the period post-1991 demonstrates the rise of transnational capital (ibid: 527). The global media conglomerates riding on the wave of transnational capital saw India as a key emerging market. The developing national satellite network and the increasingly advertisement driven broadcasting provided them with enormous possibilities for business expansion.

With the liberalisation of the economy, the market-led model of governance entered into various sectors like education, health, planning, agriculture, to name a few. It made its entry into media via private and foreign players who transmitted signals into India through satellite transmission. The loosening up of the airwaves allowed these broadcasters to beam news from across borders. There is no official record to know when satellite television began in India. But the American network CNN was transmitting signals into India in the early nineties. However, it took the Gulf War to interest viewers in the concept of satellite television (Gupta 1998:64).

While the televization of the Gulf War raked up the Indian appetite for satellite news, it was the entry of STAR TV that capitalised on this hunger and opened up a whole new market for satellite television news in India.  Thussu (2007) argues that ‘the Indian elite, raised on a bland diet of Doordarshan, was now in a position to receive international news on television, first through the live coverage of the 1990-91 Gulf crisis by CNN (Cable News Network) and later through the Hong-Kong based STAR (Satellite Television Asian Region) TV, owned by the billionaire Li Ka-Shing. The loosening of government control was instantly cashed on up by STAR TV. STAR TV was the first major global player to recognise the demand for western, mainly American programming, when in October 1991, it started beaming a five-channel satellite service in English (Star Plus, Prime Sports, Channel V, BBC World and Star Movies).

A year later, in 1992, Zee TV was added to this pack. This became an instant hit with the English-fluent urban elite. Critically, the advertisers saw in these channels an easy way to reach India’s affluent middle classes’ (ibid: 96).

This was also the phase that witnessed the end of Doordarshan’s monopoly with the advent of private and foreign players like CNN, BBC, STAR and Zee. The entry of private and foreign players into the television sector led to mushrooming of news channels. The first television group that entered the news space was Zee. Riding on the success of its current affairs shows Ghoomta Aaina and Aap Ki Adalat, the Zee group launched its 24×7 news channel Zee News in 1995-96.  With Zee News laying the foundation, the era of 24×7 private national news channels bazaar took off in 1998 when NDTV partnered with STAR to start STAR’s 24-hour news channel. This partnership lasted for five years, ending in 2003, due to conflict over editorial rights. After parting ways with NDTV, STAR entered into a joint venture with the Ananda Bazaar Patrika group to form a media company, Media Content and Communications Service Pvt. Ld (MCCS) ran STAR News. In 2012, the ABP and STAR partnership broke, and MCCS renamed STAR News as ABP News. Aaj Tak was launched in 2000.

Initially, Aaj Tak held talks with CNN, which was eyeing an entry into the lucrative Indian market like STAR. The partnership sustained was a short time, and it was ultimately called off over editorial issues. Some well-known Hindi broadcast journalists like Rajat Sharma, Dibang, Deepak Chaurasia were associated with the channel. Its sister channel, Headlines Today (now India Today), a 24×7 English news channel, was launched in 2003. 2003 appears to be a busy year with two more national channels from the NDTV group- NDTV 24×7 in English and NDTV India in Hindi. Like Hindi broadcast journalists, few prominent English broadcast journalists worked in the NDTV group, like, Barkha Dutt, Arnab Goswami, Rajdeep Sardesai. Rajat Sharma launched the 24×7 Hindi news channel India TV in 2004. After it failed talks with the TV Today group, CNN ventured into a partnership with Global Broadcast News (currently TV18 Broadcast Company) and launched CNN-IBN (now News18). Its Hindi counterpart, News18 India, was first launched in 2007 by the Dainik Jagran Group as Channel 7. It was acquired in 2006 by Network 18 and rebranded IBN7.

 Currently, the channel operates under the name News18 India. Times Now made its entry into the Indian broadcast media scene in 2006. Belonging to the Times Group, it collaborated with Reuters, an international news agency that is part of the Reuters Group. Another channel from The Times Group is Mirror Now. Mirror Now was initially launched in 2015 as MagicBricks Now, a news channel focusing on real estate. In 2017, MagicBricks Now was replaced with Mirror Now. NewsX, owned by ITV Network, was launched in 2012. News Nation, a 24×7 Hindi news channel, was launched in 2013 by the News Nation Network Pvt. Ltd. In 2016, Arnab Goswami resigned from the Times Now channel and launched a new 24×7 English news channel Republic TV in collaboration with BJP Rajya Sabha MP Rajeev Chandrasekhar and T. Mohandas Pai, Chairman of Manipal Global Education (Devi:2020).

According to the Annual Report of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (2019-2020), the Government of India, a total of 918 private television channels (392 news channels and 526 non-news channels) have a permit to operate as of December 2019. The statistics indicate that the Indian broadcast media is growing at a fast pace both at the national and regional level. Year after year, news channels of various hues and colours are being launched, making the broadcast space overcrowded and competitive. News media has transitioned from a public service entity to a private venture. This had brought about significant transformation in key areas like organisational structuring, journalistic practices, revenue model, technological advancement, thereby impacting the role and scope of broadcasting in contemporary India.

References:

1. Asthana, Sanjay (2013). ‘Broadcasting, Space and Sovereignty in India’, in Media, Culture and Society, Vol. 35, No.4, pp. 516-534.
2. Devi, Sudeshna (2020). ‘Media Discourse in Contemporary India: A Study of Select News Channels’, Unpublished PhD Thesis, Centre for the Study of Social Systems, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.
3. Ghosh, J. (1998). ‘Liberalisation Debates’, in TJ Byres (ed), The Indian Economy: Major Debates Since Independence, pp. 295-334. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
4. Mankekar, Purnima (1998). Screening Culture, Viewing Politics: An Ethnography of Television, Womanhood and Nation in Modern India, Durham: Duke University Press.
5. Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (2020). https://mib.gov.in/sites/default/files/Annual%20Report%202019-20.pdf
6. Mitra, Ananda (1993). Television and Popular Culture in India: A Study of Mahabharat. New Delhi: Sage Publications.
7. Ninan, Sevanthi (1995). Through the Magic Window: Television and Social Change in India. New Delhi: Penguin.
8. Page and Crawley Page, David and Crawley, David (2001). Satellites Over South Asia: Broadcasting, Culture and Public Interest. New Delhi: Sage Publications.
9. Rajagopal, Arvind (2003). Politics after Culture: Hindu Nationalism and the Reshaping of the Public. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
10. Singhal, A. and E.M. Rogers (1989). India’s Information Revolution. New Delhi: Sage Publication.
11. Thussu, Daya Kisan (2007). News as Entertainment: The Rise of Global Infotainment. London: Sage.

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Dr. Sudeshna Devi is an independent researcher based in Noida. She received her PhD in Sociology from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi. Her research interests include media history, newsrooms, representations, public opinion and new media.