In a bid to compete with channels, DD news seeks a private helping hand
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In a bid to compete with the multitude of private television news channels dominating India's news space, Doordarshan (DD) News has decided to seek professional help for another round of image makeover.
An expression of interest has already been invited to hire a private agency, which will work on "providing creative inputs, technical infrastructure and man power for enhancing look and feel of DD (News) channel".
DD news is a bilingual channel under public service broadcaster Doordarshan with English and Hindi news bulletins alternating on it. DD and All India Radio's parent body Prasar Bharati has been mulling changing this equation and making DD News a purely Hindi language channel and making DD's international channel DD India an English news channel.
The shortlisted agency will be tasked with designing graphics and animation for everyday news bulletins and programmes on current affairs. It will also have to develop an application that would help facilitate updating of news tickers on newsbreaks, and other news updates.
Other responsibilities of the agency include developing chroma backgrounds, studio designs, virtual studio sets, channel montages, promos for regular programmes and special events.
The agency is also responsible for composing original music for them, creating story-specific, animated real time graphics for daily operations of the channel, developing weather graphics with automatic generation, as well as providing professional manpower and requisite software and hardware for daily assignments at DD News.
Former journalist and Prasar Bharati chairman A Surya Prakash said he and his team has invested a lot to improve the look and feel of DD News in the last two years, in terms of graphics, correspondents and news packages.
"The efforts made by us have yielded results. The BARC data states that the English band of DD news has 58 to 64 per cent English news viewership. It is miles ahead of other private English news channels, even during the prime-time news," he claimed. The Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) classifies DD News as a Hindi news channel.
He further asserted that in the last two years, several English news viewers have migrated to DD News, because the channel remains loyal to the genre in which it is placed, which is that of a news channel.
He, however, refused to comment on the new agency being hired for further improvement of the channel.
While there is indeed a positive feedback about improvement in the look and feel of DD News, the channel, however, continues to be marred by allegations of a pro-government bias in news coverage. This includes blacking out of Congress president Sonia Gandhi's Lok Sabha speech on the Quit India anniversary where she had taken a veiled dig at the BJP-RSS, from the DD News' YouTube channel.
Refuting claims that DD News continues to be known as a government news channel, a senior official from the channel said if compared with other private channels, there is imbalance everywhere.
"It is all about the degree of imbalance. As against earlier times, DD news has been showing the government's views as well as counter views too, which may not be a 50-50, but at least a 60-40, where 40 per cent is given to the opposition's views," the official added.
At present, DD News produces news in Hindi, English, Urdu and Sanskrit languages and covers 49 per cent of the country's population.
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