Popular culture in Doordarshan

Abstract

Television was initiated in India to promote education and information and as a means of development communication. It was inspired by Italian television, the educational programmes of West European countries, and, at a later stage, the success of Mexico's ‘Televisa’, a private commercial network producing popular melodramatic series with a view to promoting family planning, adult literacy, health and sanitation. In the initial phase, the target audiences of Indian television were the poor, the illiterate, and the deprived masses, but in course of time, that agenda got eroded. The television industry underwent a massive transformation, from a tiny monopolised government controlled propagandists establishment to a highly market-centric, investment-oriented one feeding on advertising revenues. This meant that television programme genres originated from its popularity rating by an ‘audience’ that represented the Indian consumer market. In order to promote programmes of substance, Doordarshan began to broadcast quality programming, but most of it catered to the intellectual appetite of a section of the urban and semi-urban elite and middle class, leaving the poor and the illiterate, mainly residing in the rural areas, untouched. Moreover, under the new State policy of privatisation and globalisation, all the early objectives lost fundamental relevance.