With both viewers and advertisers deserting it, Doordarshan seems to be a dying channel. Can CEO Anil Baijal infuse fresh life into it? 

By Seetha

Prasar bharti chief executive officer (CEO) Anil Baijal's diminutive frame belies the onerous responsibilities he's often called upon to shoulder. As the Managing Director of Indian Airlines between 1998 and 2000, he piloted the beleaguered airline back into the black. And now, after a brief punishment posting as chief secretary of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, he's got the awesome task of ensuring that public service broadcaster Doordarshan (DD) isn't zapped out of the reckoning in the ongoing battle of the eyeballs being played out across television screens.

It's going to be a really tough call, if the recent fiasco over the bidding for the DD Metro prime time bands is any indication.

A quick update. Last year, a three-hour band (7 p.m. to 10 p.m) on DD Metro was sold for one year to HFCL-Nine for a whopping Rs 121 crore. HFCL-Nine aggressively marketed the band (christened Nine Gold), provided quality entertainment, and jazzed up a till-then fuddy-duddy channel. The result? Viewership ratings of DD Metro went up (See How Doordarshan Is Losing Out In The Battle For The Eyeballs). Having made huge investments in programming, HFCL-Nine wanted to get into a long-term relationship with Doordarshan on a revenue-sharing basis. Doordarshan didn't agree. Says Baijal: ''As a public-funded organisation, we do not change terms and conditions of a contract once it has been signed. Other potential bidders can allege denial of opportunity.''

When fresh bids were invited in June, HFCL-Nine kept away, claiming Doordarshan set ''unrealistic and commercially unviable'' terms and conditions, including holding back re-runs of programmes for one year after the last episode and telecasting the programmes free on DD World. No one else bid, put off by Doordarshan's reserve price of Rs 93 crore. When the reserve price was dropped, Doordarshan got all of three bids, totalling Rs 24 crore, with Sri Adhikari Brothers Television Network Ltd (SABTNL) offering the highest bid of Rs 18 crore. All three bids were thrown out. Doordarshan will now go back to handling programming on its own. ''We are running 20 channels, surely we can run three hours,'' shrugs Baijal. He plans a mix of sponsored and commissioned programmes, co-productions (where revenue share will be divided between Doordarshan and the producer on the basis of the value of the airtime and production costs) and programmes bought off the shelf.

It's not DD Metro alone that is a problem. Sources claim between 18 and 20 slots on both DD1 and DD Metro are vacant-repeats are being aired on these. Baijal and Deputy Director General T.R. Malakar deny that the figure is so high. In any case, Malakar argues, re-runs are a world-wide phenomenon and points out that repeats like Shrikant, Bharat Ek Khoj and Malgudi Days are getting good ratings of 5 and 6!

Malakar may not see a problem but it is, undoubtedly, a telling comment on Doordarshan that a broadcaster with arguably the world's largest terrestrial platform should find few takers. Private producers aren't ready to pay the huge sums Doordarshan charges as telecast fee because they are not able to make it up through advertising; and Doordarshan's huge reach doesn't excite advertisers beyond a point.

Indeed, as the cable network snakes its way into 80 per cent of television homes, viewers are gradually tuning off Doordarshan. TAM estimates that DD1 is seen in barely 43 per cent of cable and satellite (C&S) homes and the time spent on it in an entire day is 72 minutes. There are three reasons why, according to N. Bhaskara Rao, Chairman, Centre for Media Studies, people in C&S homes watch Doordarshan: when there is a transmission problem in the cable network, for the news, and when there are live programmes like sports events, the Republic Day parade, or the presentation of the Union Budget. The merciless Television Ratings (TVRs) also provide damning evidence of the decline of Doordarshan (See How Doordarshan Is Losing Out In The Battle For The Eyeballs). Though DD1 still tops the charts in all TV homes, reach and ratings have both fallen. Of the seven regional channels, only three-Marathi, Malayalam and Bengali-are doing well.

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