In a boost to public broadcasting service, Centre approves developmental scheme

As a boost to the public broadcasting service, the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs on Wednesday approved the Union information and broadcasting ministry's over ₹2,500 crore-worth of infrastructure development scheme for Prasar Bharati which heads All India Radio and Doordarshan. The Broadcasting Infrastructure and Network Development (BIND) scheme is aimed at providing financial support to the public broadcaster in the expansion and upgradation of its infrastructure, content development and civil work, according to the ministry.

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“The BIND scheme will enable the public broadcaster to undertake a major upgradation of its facilities with better infrastructure which will widen its reach, including in the LWE, border and strategic areas and provide high quality content to the viewers,” the Cabinet Committee said in a statement. Developing high-quality content for both domestic and international viewers by adding more channels to its Direct To Home (DTH) platform is also another major objective of this scheme. As part of the project, the Centre aims to purchase OB (outside broadcasting) vans, upgrade DD and AIR studio digitally and make them HD-ready.

With the new scheme, the Centre is expecting to expand the “indirect employment” opportunities of persons with varied experience. “Content generation and content innovation for AIR & DD has the potential of indirect employment of persons with varied experience of different media fields in the content production sector including TV/Radio production, transmission and associated media related services. Further, the project for expansion of the reach of DD Free Dish is expected to generate employment opportunities in the manufacturing of the DD Free Dish DTH Boxes,” the statement said.

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The scheme will further increase the coverage of AIR FM transmitters in the country to 66 per cent geographically from current 59 per cent and 80 per cent as per population from current 68 per cent. Over eight lakh free dish STBs will also be distributed to remote, tribal, Left Wing Extremism (LWE) and border areas.

“In addition to enhancing the scope of public broadcasting, the Project for modernization and augmentation of broadcast infrastructure also has the potential to generate indirect employment by way of manufacturing and services related to supply and installation of broadcast equipment,” the statement added.