The History of Radio & Television in India

“Communication is the process of transmitting and receiving symbolic cues, both verbal and nonverbal.”

-Vendemark&Leth

      Communication is the important phenomena of day to day life. It is a trivial thing yet important of our life. Language is the system in which different symbols are related to each other to transmit messages. 

          From the complete communication event, from the time that the source sends the message until it is received by the listener is called communication transection. Communication can be from one to one, one to many, many to many and many to one. Many to one and many to many communication, is called mass communication. There are many communication research done. The most effective communication occurs when the message transmitted and the messages received are identical. When there is no distortion of from the time it leaves the source until it is received, complete fidelity is said to exist in the transaction.There are various types of communication as given below.

•   Intrapersonal Communication
•   Interpersonal Communication
•   Group Communication
•   Mass Communication
•   Mass-line Communication

                   According to Hybels & Weaver (1974) mass communication is a communication system in which an identical message is originated by an institutional organization and sent to a large number of receivers through public channels. All mass media are mass communication but all mass communication are not mass media. Political meeting is the form of public speaking as well as mass communication. As with other form of communication, mass communication shares the component of source, message, receiver and feedback. The source may be many people, the receiver largely unknown and the opportunities for feedback limited. Messages become more simplified and repetitive when the audience is large.

Messages are considered successful when large numbers of people read, listen to view the mass media product. Most procedures of mess communication emphasize entertainment to attract larger audience. Research indicates that that mass communication works to reinforce existing than as an instrument of persuasion,

 Television:

Television is the most appropriate medium for mass communication especially for the developing countries because of its involving and absorbing nature. In 1930 a larger TV screen was demonstrated by radio corporation of America at New York. By 1937, thee were 17 TV stations operating experimentally.

History Of Television Broadcasting in India:

•    An experimental television service was introduced in India with the inauguration of Delhi Kendra using UNESCO grant on 15/09/1959.The experiment was given to the government of India by Philips India Ltd., a closed circuit television was set up at industrial Exhibition organized in Delhi.
• The object of this pilot project was ‘experimentation, training and evaluation. There were two programmers on Tuesdays and Fridays evening each of one hour duration. 
• Initially 21 TV sets were installed in the rural areas of neighborhood of Delhi.
• Later UNESCO supplied approximately another 50sets which were also installed in the rural areas. 

 Tele-clubs were set up at these community viewing centers. Tele-clubs were increased to 182 by the year 1964.
 In 1961, with the assistance of Ford Foundation, an educational program was telecast for the children of the Delhi Schools. The programs were on Physics, Chemistry, English and general Science.
 Up to 1965 TV was used for community and educational programs.
 In August 1965, the first general regular service began from Delhi by setting up a modern studio with the assistance of the Federal Republic of Germany. These general programs telecast in Hindi and English were onfolk, light entertainment, uiz programs, discussions in topical subjects, interviews etc.
 In January 1967, a pilot project started in Delhi for popularizing new agricultural practices. About 6200 sets were in operation within the range of 30 kms from Delhi station.
 From 1959 to 1971 department of TV covered only Delhi area.
 At the requests of the Government, a UNESCO, mission headed by John Willings visited India to analyze the development problems and training needs of TV broadcasting.
 In November 1969, the Willings Mission submitted a detailed report on various aspects of development of TV in India.
 In October 1975, TV service went beyond Delhi with the inauguration of the second TV Centre at Bombay. TV stations started functioning at Shrinagar and Amritsar.
 Further in 1975 itself Madras, Culcutta and Lucknow were included in the TV map of India.
 In April 1976, DD was constituted as a separate department from AIR  with its own Dir/General, during the internal energy.
 SITE –The Instructional TV Experience:-
• The Satellite Instructional Television Experiment or SITE was an experimental satellite communications project launched in India in 1975, designed jointly by NASA and the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO).
• The project made available informational television programmes to rural India.
• The main objectives of the experiment were to educate the poor people of India on various issues via satellite broadcasting, and also to help India gain technical experience in the field of satellite communications.
• The experiment ran for one year from 1 August 1975 to 31 July 1976, covering more than 2400 villages in 20 districts of six Indian states and territories. (Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Rajasthan)
• The television programmes were produced by All India Radio and broadcast by NASA's ATS-6 satellite stationed above India for the duration of the project.
• The project was supported by various international agencies such as the UNDP, UNESCO, UNICEF and ITU. The experiment was successful, as it played a major role in helping develop India's own satellite program, INSAT
• The project showed that India could use advanced technology to fulfill the socio-economic needs of the country.
• SITE was followed by similar experiments in various countries, which showed the important role satellite TV could play in providing education.
• So that adoption of techniquies suggested into  the programe is possible and the possibility of the continuity of services after the satellite experiment, Community TV sets were installed in 2338 villages by ISRO,.
• The transmission was done by NASA satellite, the ATS 6 for four hours daily in 1975.
• The functioning of SITE was explained by Prof.K. Eapen as follows
 “SITE was tried out in a nation of 5671169 villages, 455000 of them were still depending on ancient means of water supply.”

 Village Selection.
• As the broadcasting time was limited, it was decided that the direct reception receivers would only be installed in 2400 villages in six regions spread across the country.
• Technical and social criteria were used to select suitable areas to conduct this experiment.
• A computer program was specially designed at ISRO to help make this selection. As one of the aims of the experiment was to study the potential of TV as a medium of development, the villages were chosen specifically for their backwardness.
• According to the 1971 census of India, the states having the most number of backward districts in the country were Orissa, Bihar, Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal and Karnataka.
 Impact
• The SITE transmissions had a very significant impact in the Indian villages. For the entire year, thousands of villagers gathered around the TV set and watched the shows.
• Studies were conducted on the social impact of the experiment and on viewership trends. It was found that general interest and viewership were highest in the first few months of the program (200 to 600 people per TV set) and then declined gradually (60 to 80 people per TV set). This decline was due to several factors, including faults developing in the television equipment, failure in electricity supply, and hardware defects, as also the villagers' preoccupation with domestic or agricultural work.
• Impact on the rural population was highest in the fields of agriculture and family planning.
• Nearly 52% of viewers reported themselves amenable to applying the new knowledge gained by them.
• Before SITE, the focus was on the use of terrestrial transmission for television signals. But SITE showed that India could make use of advanced technology to fulfill the socio-economic needs of the country.
• This led to an increased focus on satellite broadcasting in India. ISRO began preparations for a country-wide satellite system. After conducting several technical experiments, the Indian National Satellite System was launched by ISRO in 1982.
• The Indian space program remained committed to the goal of using satellites for educational purposes.
• In September 2004, India launched EDUSAT, which was the first satellite in the world built exclusively to serve the educational sector. EDUSAT is used to meet the demand for an interactive satellite-based distance education system for India.
 Educational TV
• Use of television as an instructional medium was first reported in 1932 by State University of IOWA in USA on an experimental basis in a world fair. Later on, due to the World War II the introduction of television was slowed down; and as a result by 1948 there were very few educational institutions involved in using television as an instructional medium in spite of great interest in television by the educationists.
• In India, since the inception of TV network, television has been perceived as an efficient force of education and development. With its large audience it has attracted educators as being an efficient tool for imparting education to primary, secondary and university level students. Some of the major educational television projects are discussed as hereunder:
• Secondary School television project (1961): aim to improve the standard of teaching in view of shortage of laboratories, space, equipment and dearth of qualified teachers in Delhi this project started on experimental basis in October 1961 for teaching of Physics, Chemistry, English and Hindi for students of Class XI.
• Delhi Agriculture Television (DATV) Project (KrishiDarshan) (1966): The project named KrishiDarshan was initiated on January 26, 1966 for communicating agricultural information to the farmers on experimental basis for the 80 selected villages of Union territory of Delhi through Community viewing of television and further discussions among themselves.
• Satellite Instructional Television Experiment (SITE) (1975)
• Indian National Satellite project (INSAT) (1982):The prime objective of the INSAT project was aimed at making the rural masses aware of the latest developments in the areas of agricultural productivity, health and hygiene. It was initially targeted at villagers and their school going Children of selected villages in Orissa, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Gujrat, Maharastra and Uttar Pradesh.
• UGC-Higher Education Television Project (HETV) (1984)University students were the beneficiaries of this project. The University Grants Commission in collaboration with INSAT started educational television project, popularly known as ‘Country wide Classroom’ on August 15, 1984 with the aim to update, upgrade and enrich the quality of education while extending their reach.
• IGNOU-Doordarshan Telecast (1991): aim to provide tele-counselling to students of open universities in remote areas. Owing to the encouraging response from viewers, the frequency of this project was increased to five days a week. This programme is very popular.
• Gyan-Darshan Educational Channel (2000) : Ministry of Human Resource Development, Information & Broadcasting, the PrasarBharti and IGNOU launched GyanDarshan (GD) jointly on 26th January 2000 as the exclusive Educational TV Channel of India.

 Radio:
The number of Radio stations has increased from about 100 in 1990 to 209 in 1997, and the land area covered from 84% to 91%. However despite its tremendous reach and the fact that it presents the best options for low-cost programming , radio has been treated as a poor relative for over two decades. Inn some cases listenership has risen although very negligibly in some urban areas.
 Development of Radio in India
 Broadcasting was introduced in India by amateur radio clubs in Calcutta, Bombay, Madras and Lahore.
 Before the clubs launched their ventures, several experimental broadcasts were conducted in Bombay and other cities.
 The Times of India records that a broadcast was transmitted  from the roof of it’s building on August 20, 1921.
 By the mid-1930s, there were around 20 amateur radio operators in India
 Amateur radio operators played an important part in the Indian independence movement with the establishment of illegal pro-independence radio stations in the 1940s.
 The three decades after India's independence saw only slow growth in the numbers of operators until the then Prime Minister of India and amateur radio operator, Rajiv Gandhi, waived the import duty on wireless equipment in 1984.
 Since then, numbers have picked up, and as of 2007, there were more than 16,000 operators in the country.
 Amateur radio operators have played a vital role during disasters and national emergencies such as earthquakes, tsunamis, cyclones, floods, and bomb blasts, by providing voluntary emergency communications in the affected areas.
 All India Radio
• All India Radio (AIR), officially known since 1956 as Akashvani   is the radio broadcaster of India and a division of PrasarBharati. Established in 1936, it is the sister service of PrasarBharati'sDoordarshan, the national television broadcaster. All India Radio is one of the largest radio networks in the world.
• In British India, broadcasting began in June 1923 with programmes by the Radio Club of Bombay and other radio clubs.
• According to an agreement of 1926, the private Indian Broadcasting Company (IBC) was authorized to operate two radio stations; the Bombay station began on 23 July 1927, and the Calcutta station followed on 26 August 1927.
• On 1 March 1930, however, the company went into liquidation.
• The government took over the broadcasting facilities, beginning the Indian State Broadcasting Service (ISBS) on 1 April 1930 (on an experimental basis for two years, and permanently in May 1932). On 8 June 1936 the ISBS was renamed All India Radio.
• When India became independent in 1947 the AIR network had only six stations (in Delhi, Bombay, Calcutta, Madras, Lucknow, and Tiruchi); the total number of radio sets at that time was about 275,000.
• On 3 October 1957 the VividhBharati Service was launched, to compete with Radio Ceylon.
• Television broadcasting began in Delhi in 1959 as part of AIR, but was split off from the radio network as Doordarshan on 1 April 1976.
• FM broadcasting began on 23 July 1977 in Madras, and was expanded during the 1990s.
• AIR Services
• VividhBharati
• PrasarBharati
• Regional Services:
• The headquarters of the Regional Deputy Directors General are located at Delhi and Chandigarh (NR), Lucknow and Bhopal (CR), Guwahati (NER), Kolkata (ER), Mumbai and Ahmedabad (WR), Chennai and Bangaluru (SR).
• External Services: The external services of All India Radio broadcast in 27 languages to countries outside India. The first broadcasts were in Pushto, beamed to Afghanistan and the North-West Frontier Province. Soon broadcasts began in other languages including Dari, Persian, Arabic, English, Burmese, Japanese, Chinese, Malay and French. The external services broadcast in 16 foreign and 11 Indian languages, with a total program output of 70¼ hours per day on medium- and shortwave.
• News-On-Phone Service: All India Radio launched news-on-phone service on 25 February 1998 in New Delhi; it now has service in Chennai, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Indore, Patna and Bangalore. The service is accessible through STD, ISD and local calls
• Direct-To-Home Service: Direct-to-home (DTH) service is offered on 21 channels via Insat.
• FM.
• VividhBharati
 The VividhBharati Service of All India Radio was conceptualized to combat Radio Ceylon in 1957. Within no time it proved to be a popular channel of every household. VividhBharati radio channel was launched on October 3, 1957. The service provides entertainment for nearly 15 to 17 hours a day.
 VividhBharati is one of the best-known services of AIR. Its name roughly translates as "Multi-Indian Service", and it is also known as the Commercial Broadcasting Service (CBS).
 It is the most commercially-accessible of the AIR networks and is popular in Mumbai and other large cities.
 VividhBharati offers a wide range of programmes including news, film music and comedy programs.
 It operates on different medium wave-band frequencies for each city.
 40 VividhBharati stations across the country down-linked these programmes through captive earth stations provided at each of these AIR stations.
 These 40 VividhBharati stations are known as Commercial Broadcasting Service Stations and are located at all major and commercially vibrant cities covering 97% of the Indian population.
 Some programs broadcast on VividhBharati are:
 Hawa-mahal: Radio plays based on novels and plays
         • PrasarBharati
 PrasarBharati is India's largest public broadcaster.
 It is an autonomous body set up by an Act of Parliament and comprises
 Doordarshan television network and All India Radio which were earlier media units of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India.
 PrasarBharati was established on November 23, 1997 following a demand that the government owned broadcasters in India should be given autonomy like those in many other countries.
 The Parliament of India passed an Act to grant this autonomy in 1990, but it was not enacted until September 15, 1997.
• Frequency Modulation (FM) Broadcasting
 FM broadcasting were introduced in Madras in 1977 and latr in Jalandhar in 1992.
 On Auguest 15,1993 a frequency Modulation channel was launched in Bombay with nine hours of radio time leased to private producers.
 But it was only in 1993 when time slots came to be leased to private companies that FM became synonyms of pop music and youth culture.
 The music video channels , [v] and MTV channels were launched around the same time on star TV.
The particular type of media has established itself and has been able to generate a significant audience. It is the country’s one of the blood line that connects all the Indians. The development of media shows the development of country itself.