Doordarshan, the public service broadcasting company which started September 15, 1959, owned by Ministry of India has been maintaining a low profile until they began international broadcasting in late 2000. Furthermore, currently what has caught the nation’s attention is their decision to switch to the world of digital technology by integrating their operations with digital experts.

What is the reason why Doordarshan and its parent body Prasar Bharti is making the headlines? As another step towards digital transformation, the National Broadcaster is joining hands with Google and YouTube. As part of their first initiative together, there was a collaborated operation that they performed on Independence Day celebrated on August 15, 2019. The Independence Day celebrations were streamed live for the Indian and global audience by India’s public service broadcaster Prasar Bharti through joint functioning with Google, thus making their debut YouTube video.

It has been decided that Prasar Bharti and Google will be consorting and live streaming national events like Independence Day and Republic Day in the future as well. On this year’s Independence Day, many Indian and Global audience could watch the Prime Minister’s Independence Day message and Independence Day parade through Google search results displayed under the head ‘India Independence Day’. The broadcast was available on both mobile and desktop versions.

Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha events are also live-streamed through official portals and are open for the interesting fractions of the public. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s speech can be viewed either in the personal website or through the webcast services of National Informatics Centre (NIC).

Prasar Bharti and Google had tethered to live broadcast the election poll results of States and Lok Sabha that happened on May 2019. The DD regional stations were also broadcasted in local languages as well.
Google has also planned in digitizing more than two decades worth of content of All India Radio (AIR) and Doordarshan on Arts & Culture platform for making clear and validated high-resolution images retained in national art museums. Also, it has been decided that the Google Art & Culture platform will cover Prasar Bharti’s digital archives in more than 12 languages on YouTube.

A step as such that has been taken, Google presumes that services of Prasar Bharti are available for digital users that come in all demography, region, and language, thus educating and keeping informed about the rich and varied heritage and culture of India. Users can simply log in to YouTube for watching any updates of the matters that Doordarshan handles.

With the notion to get smarter through digital transformation and beating the competition in the Broadcast industry, this new step taken by Prasar Bharti is much befitting. Without limiting the broadcasting programs to Television mediums, it was a wise step taken by Prasar Bharti to opt other mediums to gain more public and reachability of their channels.

As every communication medium chooses to be more digital in their processes, the only inference that is observed about this step taken by Prasar Bharti is that it should have happened a lot earlier. The Independence Day celebration that was live-streamed on August 15, 2019, was viewed by the plentiful audience and this proves that digitalization is too essential an ingredient for Doordarshan.