4. New Media Technology

NEW MEDIA TECHNOLOGIES

Contents UNIT 1-INTRODUCTION TO MEDIA TECHNOLOGIES

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Unit Objectives, Introduction, Meaning and classification of Mass Media, History & Origin of Mass Media, History of Television, Origin & History of Radio, Origin & History of Newspaper, Origin & Development of Magazines, History of Cinema in India, Organizational structure of All India Radio & Doordarshan, Traditional Media, Summary, Exercises & Questions Further Reading.

UNIT 1-INTRODUCTION TO MEDIA TECHNOLOGIES Structure 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 1.8 1.9 1.10 1.11 1.12 1.13

Unit Objectives Introduction Meaning and classification of Mass Media History & Origin of Mass Media History of Television Origin & History of Radio Origin & History of Newspaper Origin & Development of Magazines History of Cinema in India Organizational structure of All India Radio & Doordarshan Traditional Media Summary Exercises & Questions Further Reading

1.0 UNIT OBJECTIVES • To understand the origin of mass media • To discuss the various media technologies • To know the print and broadcast media operations • To understand the history and functioning of mass media like radio, television, cinema, newspaper, magazine • To know the organizational structure of All India Radio & Doordarshan • To learn the significance of Traditional Media in India

1.1 INTRODUCTION Media is a term referring to those organized means of dissemination of fact, opinion, entertainment, and other information, such as newspapers, magazines, out-of- home advertising, cinema films, radio, television, the World Wide Web, books, CDs, DVDs, videocassettes, video games and other forms of publishing. Academic programs for the study of mass media are usually referred to as mass communication programs.

1.2 MEANING & CLASSIFICATION OF MASS MEDIA The term "mass media" refers to the means of public communication reaching a large audience. When members of the general public refer to "the media" they are usually referring to the mass media, or to the news media, which is a section of the mass media. Sometimes mass media are referred to as the "corporate media". Types of drama in numerous cultures were probably the first mass-media, going back into the Ancient World. The first dated printed book known is the "Diamond Sutra", printed in China in 868 AD, although it is clear that books were printed earlier. Movable clay type was invented in 1041 in China. However, due to the slow spread to the masses of literacy in China, and the relatively high cost of paper there, the earliest printed mass-medium was probably European popular prints from about 1400. Newspapers developed around from 1605, with the first example in English in 1620; but they took until the nineteenth century to reach a massaudience directly. During the 20th century, the growth of mass media was driven by technology that allowed the massive duplication of material. Physical duplication technologies such as printing, record pressing and film duplication allowed the duplication of books, newspapers and movies at low prices to huge audiences. Radio and television allowed the electronic duplication of information for the first time. Mass media had the economics of linear replication: a single work could make money proportional to the number of copies sold, and as volumes went up, units costs went down, increasing profit margins further. Vast fortunes were to be made in mass media. In a democratic society, independent media serve to educate the public/electorate about issues regarding government and corporate entities. Some consider the concentration of media ownership to be a grave threat to democracy.

Mass media are the tools or technologies that facilitate dissemination of information and entertainment to a vast number of consumers. They are the tools of large-scale manufacture and distribution of information and related messages. These tools ‘mediate’ the messages; they are not the messages themselves. Mass media can also be looked at as industries, as cultural or entertainment industries. While cinema, radio, television, cable, and the press can easily be recognized as ‘mass media’, the ‘new media can be identified as recent technologies such as pagers, cellular phones, satellites, computers, electronic mail and the internet. CHECK YOUR PROGRESS Q1. Which was the first dated printed book? Mass media can be used for various purposes:

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Advocacy, both for business and social concerns. This can include advertising, marketing, propaganda, public relations, and political Enrichment and education. Entertainment, traditionally through performances of acting, music, and sports, along with light reading; since the late 20th century also through video and computer games. Journalism. Public service announcements.

Classification of media: Media refers to any kind of format used to convey information. Mass Media refers to those types of media that are designed to reach large numbers of people.

The various types of mass media are: •

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Television (cable, network, satellite, etc.) Radio Film & Video Print (newspapers, magazines, direct mail, etc.) Photography Electronic (E-mail, the Web, etc.)

All media produce a variety of genres, which refers to a particular type of style or content. Mass media genres can be divided into four basic types: Informative media - such as news shows, newspapers, informative Web sites, etc. •

Educational media - such as books, educational video, or educational software programs. • Persuasive media - such as all types of advertising, television infomercials, newspaper editorials, or Web sites that attempt to persuade. •

Entertainment media - such as entertainment magazines, movies, novels or entertainment related Web sites. •

Television offers all types of programs to the public, including comedies, dramas, documentaries, news, soap operas, talk shows, advertising, and so on. Each of these programs can illustrate more than one genre. For example, an educational television show can also be entertaining. All media work to identify specific groups as target audiences. These are groups of people who are most likely to be receptive to a particular type of program, movie, article, idea, genre, etc. Mass media is also broadly classified as: Print and Broadcast Media CHECK YOUR PROGRESS Q1. Enlist the various types of mass media.

1.3 HISTORY & ORIGIN OF MASS MEDIA Print Media History By 2000 B.C., papyrus plants were made into watery pulp, pressed into long rolls, dried, and then inscribed with hand- written symbols. In the first century A.D., parchment began to replace papyrus. The use of animal material made possible

folding and stitching of the writing surface, thus making rudimentary bound books with heavy wooden covers possible for the first time. The Chinese used a combination of vegetables materials including bark, rags, and husks to make the first true papers for artistic purposes. The making of paper spread to Europe during the Middle Ages, where monks to inscribe Biblical material used it. Handwritten books became available to the very rich, but the arduous task of copying precluded wide dissemination of written material. Though the Chinese were engaged in printing before Johann Gutenberg’s first efforts in 1450, Gutenberg is associated with ‘invention’ of printing because he brought the various printing technologies together in a way that made quality reproduction of books and pamphlets possible with greater speed and lower costs. Gutenberg’s techniques prevailed for centuries. Even after the evolution of highspeed rotary presses, and, still later, electronic photo-offset techniques that rendered raised metal printing obsolete, Gutenberg’s basic concepts survived. Today, some specialized printing is still performed on flatbed presses modeled after Gutenberg’s. Ironically, Gutenberg died a personal failure and his son-in-law Johann Fust actually carried out the printing operations that made Gutenberg famous. These printing operations further ignited the imagination of others, who set up similar presses and gave birth to the craft of printing in Europe. Guilds of craftsmen controlled production in the mid-fifteenth century, and the acceptance of printing, as a recognized craft was another step in the printing ‘revolution’. Today we understand that information can fuel revolution. But when printing was first introduced, no one could understand what changes it would work on society. An Englishman, William Caxton, learned from the European craftsmen and set up his country’s first printing press in 1476. Caxton is credited with printing the first books in English, but he did so only at the pleasure of the rulers and the patronage of the wealthy. Thus, as printing spread in England, it was carefully controlled. The first printing press to cross the Atlantic went not to the British colonies, but to the Mexico City, where the Spanish archbishop authorized the printing of religious works beginning in 1539. A mere 20 years after the Pilgrims landed in the colonies, bringing their bibles with them, the first printing press at Harvard College in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was used to publish Bay Psalm Book. The audience for books was limited by common illiteracy, the small size of the colonial population and little leisure time among the first settlers. Early publishers, conceded in Boston, Philadelphia and New York were not concerned with the masses, which had neither the education nor the money for books. The laboring class was not encouraged to read, nor were many of the settlers who pushed

westward. It was more than a century after the first press was in operation the books finally became popular medium in the United States of America. Franklin is credited with establishing the first subscription library scheme. The best book collection is early America was assembled by Thomas Jefferson - a collection that provided the foundation for the library of congress. By the 1850s, books were being written by American authors for consumption by a mass audience. By the 1950s, the boom in paperback sales had begun, and today the majority of books sold in the United States are soft cover. Among the areas of specialized book publishing today are the reference books, professional book, textbooks, children books, technical, law or medical books, entertainment, religious or hobby books. CHECK YOUR PROGRESS Q1. How did the ‘Printing Revolution’ start? Broadcast Media History Broadcasting is the distribution of audio and/or video signals which transmit programs to an audience. The audience may be the general public or a relatively large sub-audience, such as children or young adults. The date of history’s first broadcast accepted by most historians of the subject is the first radio newscast, which occurred in 1909 in San Jose, California- some 40 miles south of San Francisco. There, Dr. Charles David Herrold built a tiny experimental radio transmitter and hooked it to an aerial which was strung over downtown streets between numerous buildings. Over this spider- web of steel, the doctor broadcast news and other programs to friends in the area to whom he had provided free crystal sets. Regardless of which station was first, the broadcast industry began its meteoric growth during the 1920s: by 1922 there were some 600 stations on the air. Two year later, that number had more than double to some 1400 most of which functioned as promotional sidelines for commercial business. The stations offered music, top names of the entertainment world and other material to amuse to small number of faithful listeners. The people who owned the stations financed all of this. Despite Herrold’s fledgling attempts in San Jose to broadcast news, there was practically no attempt made in the early days to do any type of radio reporting on a

regular basis. But on rare occasions there were net broadcast of special events. The idea of network radio was not yet firmly established and these special networks were created for one time only and ceased to exist after the event. It wasn’t until November 15, 1926, that networks Broadcasting Company (NBC) began serving 25 members of its network. The Columbia Broadcasting System came into existence with 16 stations eight months later in September 1927. With the rising popularity of radio and its ability present on-the-spot reports of news events, newspapers began to suffer from look of advertising revenue. Potential advertisers soon realize that radio was attracting large number of faithful listeners who were potential buyers of their products. To try and stem this shift of audience and advertising, newspaper owners got together with three press associations (United Press, Associated Press, and the International News Service) to establish a restrictive news policy against radio. The competition between print and broadcast got so cutthroat at one point that all three services refused to sell any of their news to radio. World War II provided the motive and the raw material for broadcast news to sharpen its newsgathering abilities and techniques. Spot reports, live interviews, commentary and other current practices all came into being under the heat of battle and were tempered by the demands of the war coverage. Many of the today’s wellknown names in broadcast journalism gained their first experience what the electronic media during the war years. Television in its early days merely borrowed many of the proven radio programming and production techniques. Radio on the other hand, had to painfully experiment and develop on its own, as there was no precedent to lead the way. But television even with its full color broadcasting instant replays communications satellites and all its other expensive hardware cannot compete with radio in four respects. First radio is more immediate. Because of the technical complexities in television broadcast, radio is able to begin broadcasting from the scene of an event immediately after the arrival of the reporter. Television, on the other hand, must delay coverage until cameras, microphones, cables and other equipments are sent by truck and it may be over 30 minutes before everything is ready to go. Second, because of greater schedule flexibility, radio is able to present more news reports during the broadcast. Television with its highly structured schedule often holds news reports unit as its regularly scheduled news programmes. Radio on the other hand can interrupt its format at a moment notice for whatever time it takes to present the details on a fast breaking story. Third, radio can devote more of its

attention to local news. This advantage is more apparent in relatively small markets where the nearest television station might be away while the radio station is operating within the city limits. Technological innovations in the early 1970s saw the introduction of light-weight portable video recording equipment that increase the ability of television journalists to cover an event quickly. Electronic news Gathering (ENG) involves the use of battery-powered recorders that permit instant replay of news events without the time-consuming process normally required to develop and edit 16mm film. While ENG is still largely restricted to metropolitan areas because of equipment costs, some smaller TV stations are finding the new videotape technology an inexpensive way to provide more visual coverage in newscasts. People turn to television for extensive coverage of news events, but an overwhelming percentage of the potential audience turn on their radio to find out the first reports of a news story. Mass media in India is that part of the Indian media which aims to reach a wide audience. Besides the news media, which includes print, radio and television, the internet is playing an increasing role, along with the growth of the Indian blogging community. CHECK YOUR PROGRESS Q1. When did the first broadcast take place?

1.4 HISTORY OF TELEVISION The History of television technology can be divided along two lines: those developments that depended upon both mechanical and electronic principles, and those which are purely electronic. From the latter descended all modern televisions, but these would not have been possible without discoveries and insights from the mechanical systems. The word television is a hybrid word, created from both Greek and Latin. Tele- is Greek for "far", while -vision is from the Latin visio, meaning "vision" or "sight". It is often abbreviated as TV or the telly. The origins of what would become today's television system can be traced back to the discovery of the photoconductivity of the element selenium by Willoughby

Smith in 1873, and the invention of a scanning disk by Paul Gottlieb Nipkow in 1884. Experiments in television broadcasting were initiated during the 1920s in the United States and Europe. These experiments used a mechanical scanning disc that did not scan a picture rapidly enough. In 1923, however, came the invention of the iconoscope, the electric television tube. The inventions of the kinescope or picture tube, the electronic camera and TV home receivers arrived in rapid succession during the next few years and by the 1930s the National Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) had set up a TV station in New York, and BBC - a TV station in London, offering regular telecast programmes. Germany and France too established television stations around the same time. The World War put a brake on further developments in television, though in Nazi Germany Television was widely used as an instrument of political propaganda. Nazi party conventions were televised, but the top event in the first chapter of German television history was the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, which was staged as a gigantic propaganda show. In 1948, there were as many as 41 TV stations in the united states covering 23 cities through half a million receiving sets. The age of satellite communication dawned in 1962 with the launching of Early Bird, the first communication satellite. The two big international satellite systems, Intelset and Intersputnik began operating in 1965 and 1971 respectively and from then on the progress has been phenomenal. Today, almost every country in the world has earth stations linked to satellites fro transmission and reception. Communication satellites have literally transformed the modern world into what Marshall McLuhan, the Canadian media sociologist, liked to call ‘a global village’. In the 1970s more sophisticated transmission techniques were invented employing optical fiber cable and computer technology. Japan succeeded in designing a computer-controlled network to carry two-way video information to and from households. The audio -visual cassette and the video tape recorder, closed circuit TV, and more recently cable television, pay television and DTH (Direct-to-Home) television have changed the course of the development of TV in new and unexpected ways. DTH and digital compression technology has enhanced the number of channels, which can be accessed, as also the quality of picture and sound transmissions.

CHECK YOUR PROGRESS Q1. How did television originate? Origin and History of Indian Television Television first came to India [named as ‘Doordarshan’ (DD)] on Sept 15, 1959 as the National Television Network of India. The first telecast started on Sept 15, 1959 in New Delhi. After a gap of about 13 years, s second television station was established in Mumbai (Maharashtra) in 1972 and by 1975 there were five more television stations at Srinagar (Kashmir), Amritsar (Punjab), Calcutta (West Bengal), Madras (Tamil Nadu) and Lucknow (Uttar Pradesh). For many years the transmission was mainly in black & white. Television industry got the necessary boost in the eighties when Doordarshan introduced colour TV during the 1982 Asian Games. Indian small screen programming started off in the early 1980s. At that time there was only one national channel Doordarshan, which was government owned. The Ramayana and Mahabharat was the first major television series produced. This serial notched up the world record in viewer ship numbers for a single program. By the late 1980s more and more people started to own television sets. Though there was a single channel, television programming had reached saturation. Hence the government opened up another channel which had part national programming and part regional. This channel was known as DD -2 later DD Metro. Both channels were broadcast terrestrially. The central government launched a series of economic and social reforms in 1991 under Prime Minister Narasimha Rao. Under the new policies the government allowed private and foreign broadcasters to engage in limited operations in India. This process has been pursued consistently by all subsequent federal administrations. Foreign channels like CNN, Star TV and domestic channels such as Zee TV and Sun TV started satellite broadcasts. Starting with 41 sets in 1962 and one channel (Audience Research unit, 1991) at present, TV in India covers more than 70 million homes giving a viewing population more than 400 million individuals through more than 100 channels. A large relatively untapped market, easy accessibility of relevant technology and a variety of programmes are the main reasons for rapid expansion of Television in India. In 1992, the government liberated its markets, opening them up to cable television. Five new channels belonging to the Hong Kong based STAR TV gave Indians a fresh breath of life. MTV, STAR Plus, BBC, Prime Sports and STAR Chinese

Channel were the 5 channels. Zee TV was the first private owned Indian channel to broadcast over cable. A few years later CNN, Discovery Channel, National Geographic Channel made its foray into India. Star expanded its bouquet introducing STAR World, STAR Sports, ESPN and STAR Gold. Regional channels flourished along with a multitude of Hindi channels and a few English channels. By 2001 HBO and History Channel were the other international channels to enter India. By 2001-2003, other international channels such as Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, VH1, Disney and Toon Disney came into foray. In 2003 news channels started to boom. History of Television in India The Indian television system is one of the most extensive systems in the world. Terrestrial broadcasting, which has been the sole preserve of the government, provides television coverage to over 90% of India's 900 million people, setting the stage for India to develop into one of the world's largest and most competitive television environments. Broadcasting was harnessed for the task of political nation building. Broadcasting was organized as the sole preserve of the chief architect of this process of political integration --the State. The task of broadcasting was to help in overcoming the immediate crisis of political instability that followed Independence and to foster the long-term process of political modernization and nation building that was the dominant ideology of the newly formed state. It was in the context of this dominant thinking about the role of broadcasting in India that television was introduced in 1959. The government had been reluctant to invest in television until then because it was felt that a poor country like India could not afford the medium. Television had to prove its role in the development process before it could gain a foot-hold in the country. Television broadcasts started from Delhi in September 1959 as part of All India Radio's services. Programs were broadcast twice a week for an hour a day on such topics as community health, citizens’ duties and rights, and traffic and road sense. In 1961 the broadcasts were expanded to include a school educational television project. In time, Indian films and programs consisting of compilation of musicals from Indian films joined the program line-up as the first entertainment programmes. A limited number of old U.S. and British shows were also telecast. The first major expansion of television in India began in 1972, when a second television station was opened in Bombay. This was followed by stations in

Srinagar and Amritsar (1973), and Calcutta, Madras and Lucknow in 1975. Relay stations were also set up in a number of cities to extend the coverage of the regional stations. In 1975, the government carried out the first test of the possibilities of satellite based television through the SITE program. SITE (Satellite Instructional Television Experiment) was designed to test whether satellite based television services could play a role in socio-economic development. In these early years television, like radio, was considered a facilitator of the development process and its introduction was justified by the role it was asked to play in social and economic development. Television was institutionalized as an arm of the government, since the government was the chief architect of political, economic and social development in the country. Doordarshan was set up as an attached office under the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting--a halfway house between a public corporation and a government department. In 1982 television began to attain national coverage and develop as the government's pre-eminent media organization. Two events triggered the rapid growth of television that year. INSAT-1A, the first of the country's domestic communications satellites became operational and made possible the networking of all of Doordarshan's regional stations. 1976 witnessed a significant event in the history of Indian television, the advent of advertising on Doordarshan. Until that time television had been funded through a combination of television licenses and allocations from the annual budget (licenses were later abolished as advertising revenues began to increase substantially). Advertising began in a very small way with under 1% of Doordarshan's budget coming from advertising revenues in 1976- 77. The commercialization of Doordarshan saw the development of soap operas, situation comedies, dramas, musical programs, quiz shows and the like. By 1990 Doordarshan's revenues from advertising were about $300 million, accounting for about 70% of its annual expenditure. International satellite television was introduced in India by CNN through its coverage of the Gulf War in 1991. Three months later Hong Kong based Star TV (now owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.) started broadcasting five channels into India using the ASIASAT-1 satellite. By early 1992, nearly half a million Indian households were receiving Star TV telecasts. Taking advantage of the growth of the satellite television audience, a number of Indian satellite based television services were launched between 1991 and 1994, prominent among them

Zee TV, the first Hindi satellite channel. By the end of 1994 there were 12 satellite-based channels available in India, all of them using a handful of different satellites. This number was expected to double by the end of 1996. Despite the rapid growth of television channels from 1991 to 1996, television programming continues to be dominated by the Indian film industry. Hindi films are the staple of most national channels and regional channels rely heavily on a mix of Hindi and regional language films to attract audiences. One of Doordarshan's most popular programs, Chitrahaar, is a compilation of old film songs and all the private channels, including Zee TV and music video channels like MTV Asia and Channel V, show some variation of Chitrahaar. A number of game shows are also based on movie themes. Other genres like soap operas, talk shows and situation comedies are also gaining in popularity, but the production of these programs has been unable to keep up with demand, hence the continuing reliance on film based programming. International satellite programming has opened up competition in news and public affairs programming with BBC and CNN International challenging Doordarshan's long-standing monopoly. Most of the other foreign broadcasters, for example, ESPN and the Discovery Channel, are focusing on special interest programming. A peculiar development in television programming in India has been the use of hybrid English-Hindi program formats, popularly called "Hinglish" formats, which offer programs in Hindi and English on the same channel and even have programs, including news shows, that use both languages within a single telecast. This takes advantage of the audience for television (especially the audience for satellite television), which is largely composed of middle class Indians who have some knowledge of English along with Hindi. A huge industry by itself, the Indian silver screen has thousands of programmes in all the states of India. The small screen has produced numerous celebrities of their own kind some even attaining national fame.TV soaps are extremely popular with housewives as well as working women. Some small time actors have made it big in Bollywood. Public television in India has the following social objectives: 1. 2. 3. 4.

To act as a catalyst for social change To promote national integration To stimulate a scientific temper in the minds of the people To disseminate the message of family planning as a means of population control and family welfare

5. To provide essential information and knowledge in order to stimulate greater agricultural production 6. To promote and help preserve environmental and ecological balance 7. To highlight the need for social welfare measures including welfare of women, children and the less privileged 8. To promote interest in games and sports, 9. To create values of appraisal of art and our cultural heritage. CHECK YOUR PROGRESS Q1. When and how did Doordarshan started in India?

1.5 ORIGIN AND HISTORY OF RADIO IN INDIA A combination of a number of discoveries by technicians and scientist from different countries gave rise to the development of wireless telegraphy and later to radio broadcasting. It took ten years for wireless telegraphy, to become a broadcasting system. First, the World War prompted the industrialization of wireless telegraphy, secondly in the United States the radio created a communication environment in which amateurs could operate freely. Broadcasting began in India with the formation of a private radio service in Madras in 1924. In the same year, the British colonial government granted a license to a private company, the Indian Broadcasting Company, to open Radio stations in Bombay and Calcutta. The company went bankrupt in 1930 but the colonial government took over the two transmitters and the Department of Labor and Industries started operating them as the Indian State Broadcasting Corporation. In 1936, the Corporation was renamed All India Radio (AIR) and placed under the Department of Communications. When India became independent in 1947, AIR was made a separate Department under the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. The early history of radio broadcasting in independent India is important because it set the parameters for the subsequent role of television in the country. At Independence, the Congress government under Jawaharlal Nehru had three major goals: to achieve political integration, economic development and social

modernization. Broadcasting was expected to play an important role in all three areas. The most important challenge the government faced at independence was that of forging a nation out of the diverse political, religious, geographic and lingual entities that composed independent India. In addition to the territories ruled directly by the British, over 500 hundred "independent" princely states had joined the new nation, some quite reluctantly. The country immediately found itself at war with Pakistan over one of those states-- Kashmir. The trauma of the partition of the country into India and Pakistan and the violence between Hindus and Muslims had further weekend the political stability of the country. Broadcasting was harnessed for the task of political nation building. National integration and the development of a "national consciousness" were among the early objectives of All India Radio. Broadcasting was organized as the sole preserve of the chief architect of this process of political integration for the State. The task of broadcasting was to help in overcoming the immediate crisis of political instability that followed Independence and to foster the long-term process of political modernization and nation building that was the dominant ideology of the newly formed state. Radio broadcasting is a Government of India monopoly under the Directorate General of All India Radio--established in 1936 and since 1957 also known as Akashvani--a government-owned, semi commercial operation of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. From only six stations at the time of independence, All India Radio's network had expanded by the mid-1990s to 146 AM stations plus a National Channel, the Integrated North-East Service (aimed at tribal groups in northeast India), and the External Service. There are five regional headquarters for All India Radio: the North Zone in New Delhi; the North-East Zone in Guwahati, Assam; the East Zone in Calcutta; the West Zone in Bombay; and the South Zone in Madras. The government -owned network provides both national and local programs in Hindi, English, and sixteen regional languages. Vividh Bharati Service, headquartered in Bombay, provides commercial Radio services in India, which were inaugurated in 1967. Vividh Bharati, which accepts advertisements, broadcasts from thirty-one AM and FM stations in the mid-1990s. India has an extensive network of medium wave and shortwave stations. In 1994 there were eighty-five FM stations and seventy-three shortwave stations that covered the entire country. The broadcasting equipment is mostly Indian made and reaches special audiences, such as farmers needing agro climatic, plant protection,

and other agriculture-related information. The number of radio receivers increased almost fivefold between 1970 and 1994, from around 14 million to nearly 65 million. Most radios are also produced within India. The foreign broadcast service is a function of the External Services Division of All India Radio. In 1994 seventy hours of news, features, and entertainment programs were broadcast daily in twenty-five languages using thirty-two shortwave transmitters. The principal target audiences are listeners in neighboring countries and the large overseas Indian community. FM Broadcasts were introduced in Madras in 1977 and later at Jalandhar in 1992, but it was only in 1993 when time slots came to be leased to private companies that FM became synonymous with pop music and youth culture. FM broadcasts ensure reception free from atmospheric noise and electric interference. The AIR stations of Delhi, Bombay, Panaji, Bangalore, Madras, Calcutta, now sell FM slots to private producers such as Times FM, Radio Midday and Radiostar. FM broadcasts in most of the cities are oriented to urban Englishspeaking youth, with western pop music dominating. Besides sponsored hit parades and countdowns, the FM programmes include chat shows, news bulletin, contests, quizzes and plays. Advertising support for the leased slots is naturally on the rise. CHECK YOUR PROGRESS Q1. When is the first Radio Broadcast dated in India? Early years of Radio Broadcasting in India Lionel Fielden, India’s first Controller of broadcasting, tells the story of the early years of Indian Broadcasting in his autobiography: “ A group of Indian businessmen, fired by the financial success of European broadcasting, had floated a company in 1927, with a too merge capital, built two weak little stations at Calcutta and Bombay. In the following three years they had gathered some 7,000 listeners and lost a great deal of money. They decided to go into liquidation. The government of India, which then and later with considerable wisdomthought broadcasting a curse was thereupon bullied by the vested interests of radio dealers to buy up the transmitters. Having done so, it proceeded, quite naturally, to economize; file-writers in Delhi could hardly be expected to sanction

public expenditure on music, drama and similar irrelevancies: it seemed obvious that all such frivolous waste should be avoided. The programmes accordingly deteriorated even from their former low standard and Indian broadcasting would have spiraled down to complete eclipse had not the BBC, at the critical moment, started an Empire programme on the short wave. Europeans in India rushed to buy sets; and since the government had, by way of strangling broadcasting altogether, put an import duty of fifty percent on sets, even the 8000 extra stets purchased brought quite a deal of money under the broadcasting head. The dealers cried that broadcasting’s profits must be used for broadcasting. The government replied with the offer of a new station at Delhi and a man-me- from the BBC. But, however, much English residents of India listened to the BBC-and to the radio dealers it did not matter, then, who listened to what as long as sets were sold-Indian broadcasting remained what it has always been”

1.6 ORIGIN AND HISTORY OF NEWSPAPER Origin of Newspaper in India Newspaper industry in any country is related to the beginning of printing press and it was Johann Guttenberg who invented printing press in 1455. Thus in India too, the beginning of newspaper is related to the beginning of the press. The Portuguese introduced the printing press in Goa, in 1557. British East India Company brought about the printing press in India and first press was strolled at Bombay in 1674. Ironically, the first printing press was strolled in 1674, yet there was no newspaper being published for another 100 years. William Bolts who was an officer in the company announced a hand written newspaper in 1776. He wrote the newspaper and asked the people to come to his residence to read it. The aim of this newspaper was to inform British Company in India to the news from home and also to bring about the grievances against colonial administration. The first newspaper to be published in India was ‘Bengal Gazette’ or Calcutta general, which was a weekly newspaper. Later, it was named as ‘Hickey’s Gazette. Hickey declared that he started the newspaper to expose corruption and favoritism of the Company and thus he covered all the inner fights of the company and did not spare even the governor general.

Raja Ram Mohan Roy published out free newspapers magazines in the year 1821, namely Sambad Kaumudi (Bengali), Mirat-ul-Akbar (Persian), brahamanical magazine (English) . It was the first time that through these newspapers Raja Ram Mohan Roy tried to cover all the readers in India. The first newspapers in Bombay were owned and printed by Parsis, who already owned the technological and financial basis for such ventures. Rustomji Keshaspathi printed the first English newspaper in Bombay in 1777. The first vernacular newspaper in Bombay was the Gujarati daily Mumbai Samachar, published in 1822 by Fardoonjee Marzban. Although not the first newspaper in an Indian language, Mumbai Samachar is still being published and is India’s oldest newspaper. CHECK YOUR PROGRESS Q1. Which was the first newspaper published in India? Brief History of Newspaper in India 200-year history of the Indian press, from the time of Hicky to the present day, is the history of a struggle for freedom, which has not yet ended. There has been alternating periods of freedom and of restrictions on freedom amounting to repression. The first newspaper meant for publication was ‘announced’ in 1776 by William Bolts and he asked those interested to come to his residence to read the news. This ‘newspaper’ had the twin function of informing the British community to news from ‘home’, and of ventilating grievances against the colonial administration. But it was only until James Augustus Hicky dared to start his Bengal Gazette (also called Hicky’s Gazette) in 1780 that the age of journalism dawned in India. England had already had a taste of the Spectator papers of Addison and Steele, and of lesser- known periodicals as well, and learnt about the power of the periodical essayists, to laugh to scorn the manners of society. Political and social corruption was rife among the British sent to rule our country when Hicky, a printer by profession, launched his Gazette ‘in order to purchase freedom for my mind and soul’. He described the Bengal Gazette (later Hicky’s Gazette) as a ‘weekly political and commercial paper open to all parties but influenced none’. His venom was aimed at individuals like Mr. Warren Hastings and their private affairs. He published announcements of marriages and engagements, and of ‘likely’ engagements. Barely a year later, Sir Warren

Hastings denied all postal facilities to Hicky who hit back with these words; “Mr. Hicky considers the liberty of the press to be essential to the very existence of an Englishman and a free government. The subject should have full liberty to declare his principles and opinions, and every act which tends to persuade that liberty is tyrannical and injurious to the community’. In June the following year, Hicky was arrested and thrust into jail, from where he continued writing for the Gazette. He was stopped from ‘bringing out his weekly only when the types used for printing were seized. Five newspapers made their appearance in Bengal in six years time-all started by Englishmen. Some of these newspapers received government patronage. The Madras Courier and the Bombay Herald were then launched in the two cities. They were submissive to the government, and therefore flourished. The total circulation of all these weeklies was not more than 2,000; yet, the government issued Press Regulations making the publication of the name of the printer, editor and proprietor obligatory. The regulations also ordered these to declare themselves to the secretary of the government; and the submit all material for prior examination to the same authority. Pre-censorship was to dog the Indian journalist for many years to come. The pioneers of Indian language journalism were the Serampore Missionaries with Samachar Darpan and other Bengali periodicals, and Raja Ram Mohan Roy with his Persian newspaper Mirat-ul- Akbar. The object of Ram Mohan Roy, the social reformer, in starting the paper was’ to lay before the public such articles of intelligence as may increase their experience, and tend to their social improvement and to ‘indicate to the rulers a knowledge of the real situation of their subjects, and make the subjects acquainted with the established laws and customs of their rules’. Roy ceased publishing his paper later in protest against the government’s press Regulations. The Bombay Samachar, a Gujarati newspaper, appeared in 1822. It was almost a decade before daily vernacular papers like Mombai Vartaman (1830), the Jan-eJamshed(1831), and the Bombay Darpan (1850), began publication. In the south, a Tamil and a Telugu newspaper was established with the aid of a government grant, and in the north West Provinces, a Hindi and an Urdu periodical started off under the government’s patronage. The Bengali press with as many as nine newspapers in 1839 had a circulation of around 200 copies each, even as the British press with 26 newspapers grew in strength and power, under the liberal rule of Lord Metcalfe, and later of Lord Auckland.

1.7 ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF MAGAZINES Origin and Development of Magazines in India There was a boom of publication of magazines in India in the year 1980s. This development could not be traced in English but in the major Indian languages as well. In fact, it is seen that nearly four out of every five Indian periodicals are in the Indian languages, and they have a circulation which is nearly three fourth of the total circulation. Hindi has the largest circulation (57.9 lakhs), with over 3,000 periodicals followed by English, which has 2,670 periodicals with a circulation of over six million. Magazines in Tamil, Malayalam, Gujarati, Bengali, Marathi, Urdu and Telugu too enjoy a fairly good circulation. The magazine boom was perhaps set off by the launch of India Today in the midseventies, and the new- look Illustrated Weekly of India under the editorship of Khushwant Singh (India Today was initially targeted at Indians settled abroad, but having failed miserably to make an impression, changed gears to target it product at the upper and middle class at home). Its inspiration right from its red- border cover page to its mode of gathering and editing and ‘packaging ‘ news has been TIMEInternational. So it came as no surprise when in 1992, India Today became the official agent of TIME magazine in India, collecting subscriptions and advertisements for it. It was only the national policy opposed to the entry of the foreign press that has kept TIME from publishing its Asian edition from New Delhi. Other magazines to be launched in quick succession in the early eighties included Gentleman, Gentleman Fashion Quarterly, Onlooker, New Delhi, The Week, G and others. Several new film magazines and computer magazines also took off around the same time. The new magazines introduced colour, gloss and a snazzy style of reporting which ‘personalized’ and ‘dramatized’ issues and events. Photographs, illustrations, charts and graphs enlivened each page, and the focus was on ‘soft’ features. High quality printing on imported glazed paper lent the magazines an expensive look. This pleased the advertising industry immensely. The rise and development of magazines continued in 1990s despite the closing of some magazines like The Illustrated Weekly of India and Bombay. The growth during this period was spectacular in case of special interest magazines, like those dealing with business and finance, computers and electronics. Several special

interest periodicals were launched in 1993: Parenting, Young Mother, Auto India, and Car & Bike. News and current affair magazines have the largest readership-around 27% of the total magazine circulation. Next in popularity are literary and cultural magazines, commanding a circulation of around 25%. Surprisingly, religious and philosophical magazines have a circulation of about 8%. Film magazines are growing in numbers and circulation. Ironically, political and film gossip makes up the staple fare of most general interest and news magazines, which in terms of circulation are in great demand at target groups such as youth, children, women, film buffs, professionals, executives, business groups, computer users, sports lovers and others.

1.8 HISTORY OF CINEMA IN INDIA Beginning of Cinema in India Before the actual beginning of cinema in India, there was the growth of musical dramas, the theatre, jatra in Bengal. Music, dance, song were an integral part of these performing traditions, this was the heritage of Sanskrit drama and later popular folk performing traditions such as the ram lila, the ras lila, the nautanki. So, when the first ‘cinematographic exhibitions’ of the Lumiere Brothers were held in Bombay on July 7, 1896, Indian dramatists, photographers, magicians, musicians and singers saw in them great potential for the re-telling of Indian myths and folklore. The Times of India advertised these early exhibitions as ‘the marvel of the country, the wonder of the world’. The ‘exhibition’ included ‘living photographic pictures’ of the arrival of a train, of workers leaving a factory, of a sea-bath, and of ladies and soldiers on wheels. The exhibition continued to draw crowds to four shows daily for over two months. It was indeed remarkable that the cinema had its beginnings in India almost at the same time as in other major filmproducing countries. Brief History of Indian Cinema The first exposure to motion pictures that India received was when the Lumiere Brothers' Cinematographer unveiled six soundless short films, on July 7, 1896, at the Watson Hotel in Mumbai. The first exposing of celluloid in a camera by an Indian and its consequent screening took place in 1899, when Save

Dada shot two short films and exhibited them under Edison's projecting kinetoscope. As the early 1900s rolled in, with the country poised for major social and political reforms, a new entertainment form dawned in India -- the cinema. Dadasaheb Phalke- a versatile talent, who had a varied career as a painter, photographer, playwright and magician before he took to film -- was responsible for the production of India's first fully indigenous silent feature film, Raja Harishchandra, adapted from the Mahabharata. The film had titles in Hindi and English, and was released on May 3, 1913 at the Coronation Cinema in Mumbai. This lay the foundation of what, in time, would grow to become the largest film producing industry in the world. After stepping into 1920, Indian cinema gradually assumed the shape of a regular industry, producing silent films and also coming within the purview of the law. The new decade saw the arrival of many new companies and filmmakers. Directors such as Dhiren Ganguly, Baburao Painter, Suchet Singh, Chandulal Shah, Ardershir Irani and V Shantaram were among the early pioneers. The increased profitability of the cinema enabled filmmakers to reinvest their gains in new productions and additional infrastructure such as studios, laboratories and theatres. By 1925, Mumbai had already become India's cinema capital. The most remarkable thing about the birth of the sound film in India is it came with a bang and quickly displaced silent movies. The first Indian talkie, Alam Ara (1931) was a 124-minute feature produced by the Imperial Film Company in Mumbai and directed by Ardershir Irani. Advertised as an all talking, all singing, all dancing film, it brought revolutionary changes in the whole set up of the industry. The 1930s are recognized as a decade of social protest in the history of Indian cinema. Three big banner production companies -- Prabhat, Bombay Talkies and New Theatres -- took the lead in making gripping but entertaining films for all classes. A number of films that made a strong plea against social injustice were produced in this period, specifically some by V Shantaram. V Shantaram's illustrious career spanned seven decades from the 1920s to 1986. He was arguably the most innovative and ambitious filmmaker in the industry's history, creating 105 films as a director, producer and actor. His first talkie and bilingual film in 1932, Ayodhye Cha Raja, was about a legendary Indian king loved by all his subjects and remembered for his fairness. V Shantaram cast an upper caste Brahmin woman in the lead to break the rules. In those days, women

actors were looked down upon. Since then, the industry has attracted women from the upper castes to lend it respectability. His Amar Jyoti (1936) became the first women's lib film in India and first Indian film to be screened at an International Film Festival (Venice). 1937, 1939 and 1941 saw the release of his acclaimed trilogy -- Duniya Na Mane, Aadmi and Pados -highlighting the hypocrisy of Indian society. In 1943, under his own banner Rajkamal Studios, he made Shakuntala -- a major box office hit starring his wife, Jayshree that ran for 104 weeks in one theatre. It became the first Indian film to be commercially released in America in 1947. In 1946, he made Dr Kotnis Ki Amar Kahani, in which he played the lead. It is the story of a young Indian doctor sent to China as part of a team by Jawaharlal Nehru on a humanitarian mission to aid the Chinese in their war against Japan. The doctor marries a Chinese nurse and dies serving the wounded on a battlefield. The British applauded the film's anti-Japanese plot; the Communists were happy with its setting around Mao Zedong's army, while its patriotic theme appealed to the Indian National Congress. Thus, V Shantaram's film became perhaps the only instance the Congress, Communists and British agreed on anything! Indian cinema had its golden age from the 1950s to mid-1960s, at a time when budgets were generally lower and directors were encouraged to be inventive rather than play safe. Influential directors like Mehboob Khan, K Asif, Raj Kapoor, Guru Dutt and Bimal Roy all brought something new to cinema. Mehboob Khan's Mother India (1957), for instance, focused on political themes and social critique within a pop culture setting. The 1960s began with a bang with the release of K Asif's Mughal-E-Azam, which set a box-office record. An epic about Prince Salim, son of the Emperor Akbar, and his forbidden romance with court dancer Anarkali, it was one of the most expensive films to produce at the time and took 10 years to make. Guru Dutt was another wonderful actor and director whose films dealt with exploitation. Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam (1962), about a lowly servant and his plutonic relationship with the lady of the house, dealt with social hypocrisies of the time. Raj Kapoor’s films displayed two main concerns -- social critique and love that transcended social barriers. 1964's Sangam, a romantic musical, was one of his most popular films. Dev Anand's Guide (1965) was also one of the significant

films of the decade, while Bimal Roy brought with him a new era of post World War II romantic melodrama. These directors mastered the use of film, music and choreography. They transformed the film song into an art form and confirmed that music was Indian cinema's greatest strength. During every decade since the 1950s, a large number of films that would otherwise have been forgotten were saved by marvelous music. The first International Film Festival of India, held early 1952 in Mumbai, had a great impact on cinema because it allowed India's filmmakers to be exposed to films from around the world. After the golden age, the form of popular films started to evolve. The transition to colour and the consequent preference for escapist entertainment and greater reliance on stars brought about a complete change. Satyajit Ray, Ritwik Ghatak and Mrinal Sen spearheaded the New Indian Cinema - one of social significance and artistic sincerity, presenting a modern, humanist perspective more durable than the fantasy world of popular cinema. By the 1970s, Hindi film began to combine all genres into a single movie, with song and dance firmly at the heart of the narrative. This mixed approach is still the way the stories unfold today. In a Bollywood movie, such mixing and matching can translate into the hero fighting a sinister politician in one scene and serenading his heroine, with 40 dancers moving in unison behind him, in the next. The English language press in India in the late 1970s popularized the term Bollywood -- which has now become the dominant global term to refer to the prolific and box office- oriented industry in Mumbai. 'Bollywood', derived by combining Bombay with Hollywood, has also been included in the Oxford English dictionary. The 1970s further-widened the gap between multi-star big budget and offbeat films. The hits of the decade include Kamal Amrohi's Pakeezah (1971), depicting the desire of a courtesan to find a place in respectable society. Ramesh Sippy's Sholay (1975) was the first Indian movie produced on 70millimetre film with stereophonic sound. It ran for five years to full houses, ushering in a new era of action. Other important films by noted directors -- Shyam Benegal, Govind Nihalani and Muzaffar Ali -- continued to hold audiences in the 1980s. The late 1980s and early

1990s saw the revival of musical love stories. The family drama Hum Aapke Hain Kaun (1994), for instance, went on to become the highest grossing Indian film of all time -- despite the fact that it has 14 songs, runs for 195 minutes, has no villain and no violence! India produces about 800 to 1,000 films yearly, in dozens of languages. About 300 of these can be considered 'Bollywood' films as they are filmed in Hindi, the dominant Indian language. They reach nearly 3.6 billion people worldwide, claiming many followers in the Middle East, South and East Asia, Fiji Islands, Russia, the UK, North America and the Caribbean. Indian and Western film progressed along a parallel path for some time, as Bollywood and Hollywood began at essentially the same time. Yet, a gulf emerged due to India's reluctance to change, illiteracy and the application of censorship. The censor board has finally allowed kissing on screen although, inexplicably, scantily clad women and erotically charged scenes involving women in wet clothes have always been allowed. The subject matter of most films is particularly culturally oriented and Western audiences unfamiliar with the cultural nuances may not understand the meaning of certain things happening within the film. These factors have hindered the films from gaining worldwide acceptance. One of the most defining features of popular cinema in India is the presence of music in the form of songs. Actors lip-sync songs sung by playback singers, who became permanent fixtures in the industry since 1935. Film music accounts for nearly 80 percent of music sales in India, thanks to the general belief in the industry that love and romance are best expressed musically. The film industry was granted official industry status by the government in 1998, allowing corporate financing. Until then, film financing had come mostly from the private sector or, allegedly, the Indian underworld. Industry status coupled with liberalization has made overseas production and distribution easier. All this has lead to Indian film producers and directors targeting the Indian Diaspora. They have gone to the extent of filming subjects where Bollywood actors themselves play the roles of Diaspora Indians, the dominant language being 'Hinglish.' The film industry in India, like the press, and unlike the television and radio, is entirely free and independent. It is subject only to the terms and conditions of the cinematograph Act of 1952, which is still in operation, although it has been amended many times. The Act imposes certain norms that are to be observed, relating particularly to censorship, taxation, import and export of films.

CHECK YOUR PROGRESS Q1. How and where did India get its first exposure to cinema?

1.9 ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE OF ALL INDIA RADIO & DOORDARSHAN Prasar Bharati (Broadcasting Corporation of India) is the public service broadcaster in the country, with Akashwani (All India Radio) and Doordarshan as its two constituents. It came into existence on 23rd November 1997, with a mandate to organize and conduct public broadcasting services to inform, educate and entertain the public and to ensure a balanced development of broadcasting on radio and television. Prasar Bharati Board functions at the apex level ensuring formulation and implementation of policies of the organization and fulfillment of the mandate in terms of the Prasar Bharati Act, 1990. The Executive Member functions as the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Corporation, subject to the control and supervision of the Board. The CEO, the Member (Finance) and the Member (Personnel) perform their functions from the Prasar Bharati headquarters at Parliament Street, New Delhi. All important policy matters relating to finance, administration and personnel are submitted to the CEO and the Board through the Member (Finance) and the Member (Personnel) as required, for the purpose of advice, implementation of proposals and decisions thereon. Officers from different streams working in the Prasar Bharati Secretariat assist the CEO, the Member (Finance) and the Member (Personnel) in integrating actions, operations, plans and policy implementation as well as look after the budget, accounts and general financial matters of the Corporation. Prasar Bharati also has a unified vigilance set up at the headquarters, headed by a Chief Vigilance Officer. Prasar Bharati Marketing offices located at Mumbai, New Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai, Bangalore and Hyderabad look after marketing activities of both All India Radio and Doordarshan. To facilitate decision making, the Policy & Executive Committee (earlier known as Management Committee) chaired by the CEO, has been constituted for both Doordarshan and AIR.

The Directors General heads the Directorate General of All India Radio and the Directorate General of Doordarshan. They function in close association with the Member (Finance), the Member (Personnel) and the CEO, in carrying out the dayto-day affairs of AIR and Doordarshan. Both in AIR and Doordarshan, there are broadly four different wings responsible for distinct activities viz. Programme, News, Engineering and Administration & Finance. AIR (All India Radio) All India Radio (AIR) is a national service planned, developed and operated by the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting under the Government of India. Sound broadcasting started in India in 1927 with the proliferation of private radio clubs. The operations of All India Radio began formally in 1936, as a government organization, with clear objectives to inform, educate and entertain the masses. When India attained Independence in 1947, AIR had a network of six stations and a complement of 18 transmitters. The coverage was 2.5% of the area and just 11% of the population. Rapid expansion of the network took place post Independence. AIR today has a network of 223 broadcasting centres with 143 medium frequency (MW), 54 high frequency (SW) and 161 FM transmitters. The coverage is 91.42% of the area, serving 99.13% of the people in the largest democracy of the world. AIR covers 24 Languages and 146 dialects in home services. In External services, it covers 27 languages; 17 national and 10 foreign languages. All India Radio comes under the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting Government of India. A secretary and four joint secretaries who are supposed to do the following jobs assist the minister of information and broadcasting: • Policy • Broadcasting • Financial Advisor and • Film In order to help the joint secretaries in the execution of above jobs, there are deputy secretary and under secretaries also. Radio stations come in all sizes and generally are classifies as being either small, medium or large market outlets. The size of the community that a station serves usually reflects the size of its staff. For example, the station in a town of five thousand residents may have six to eight fulltime employees in the station.

Medium markets are set up in more densely populated areas and in this type of station; there are twelve to twenty employees. Mostly, overlapping of duties occur in the larger stations, positions are usually limited to specific areas of responsibility. Large stations may employ as many as sixty to hundred people and as few as twenty depending on the nature of their format. In All India Radio, Director General is the head of the organization, and therefore it is a sensitive post requiring a wide cultural background, initiative, tact, administrative abilities, sound judgment of matters and people, a deep commitment to broadcasting and qualities of leadership of a high order. Occasionally, Indian Administration Service Officers are assigned an additional task of Director General of All India Radio and since independence; there have been around 15 IAS officers who have performed the task of Director General of AIR. There are Additional Director General and Deputy Director Generals also who help the Director General is assisted by Director of Programmes. A Director whose rank is equivalent to Deputy Director General heads news Division. The Director is assisted by Chief News Editor, News Editor, Joint Director, etc. others employed in the news department of the radio station are the News Readers, Announcers, Translators and others. The Engineering Division of AIR is looked after by Engineer- in-Chief and is assisted by Chief Engineer and Regional Engineers. The Regional Stations of AIR is under the control of Station Director who is assisted by Assistant Station Directors and Programme Executives. B.G. Verghese Committee has also proposed an organizational structure for AIR, which has the following posts of General Managers: 1. GM Legal Services 2. GM Planning 3. GM Information The committee also proposed a Central News Room consisting of a General Manager, Editor, Foreign Editor, Editor Monitoring. This committee has also proposed the creation of the posts of Station Manager, Accounts and Personnel Officer, Programme Officer, Extension Officer, etc.

CHECK YOUR PROGRESS Q1. When did AIR broadcasting start in India? Doordarshan Doordarshan is a Public broadcast Terrestrial television channel run by Prasar Bharati, a board nominated by the Government of India. It is one of the largest broadcasting organisations in the world in terms of the infrastructure of studios and transmitters. Recently it has also started Digital Terrestrial Transmitters. Doordarshan had a modest beginning with the experimental telecast starting in Delhi in September 1959 with a small transmitter and a makeshift studio. The regular daily transmission started in 1965 as a part of All India Radio. The television service was extended to Mumbai (then Bombay) and Amritsar in 1972. Till 1975, seven Indian cities had television service and Doordarshan remained the only television channel in India. Television services were separated from radio in 1976. Each office of All India Radio and Doordarshan were placed under the management of two separate Director Generals in New Delhi. Finally Doordarshan as a National Broadcaster came into existence. National programme was introduced in 1982. In the same year, colour TVs were introduced in the Indian markets with the live telecast of the Independence Day parade on 15 August 1982, followed by the Asian Games being held in Delhi. The 80s was the era of Doordarshan with soaps like Hum Log (1984), Buniyaad (198687) and mythological dramas like Ramayan (1987-88) and Mahabharat (1988-89) glued millions to DoorDarshan. Other popular programs included Hindi film songs based programs like Chitrahaar and Rangoli and crime thrillers like Karamchand. Now more than 90 percent of the Indian population can receive DoorDarshan (DD1) programmes through a network of nearly 1400 terrestrial transmitters. About 46 DoorDarshan Studios are producing TV programs today. Presently, DoorDarshan operates 19 channels – two All India channels, 11 Regional Languages Satellite Channels (RLSC), four State Networks (SN), an International channel, a Sports Channel and two channels (DD-RS & DD-LS) for live broadcast of parliamentary proceedings. Doordarshan Channels DD National, DD News,DD Sports, DD Bharati, DD- Gyandarshan, DD Rajya Sabha, DD Lok Sabha, DD India, DD Bengali, DD Chandana (Kannada), DD

Gujarati, DD Kashir, DD Malayalam, DD North East, DD Oriya, DD Podhigai (Tamil), DD Punjabi, DD Sahyadri (Marathi), DD Saptagiri (Telugu) CHECK YOUR PROGRESS Q1. How many regional channels does the Doordarshan have? List some of them. Organizational Structure of Doordarshan The Director General, Doordarshan is responsible for the overall administration of the Doordarshan network which consists of 60 Doordarshan Kendras / Production Centres, 126 Doordarshan Maintenance Centres, 194 High Power Transmitters, 830 Low Power Transmitters and 379 very Low Power Transmitters as on 31.12.2004. Doordarshan is presently operating 26 channels. Doordarshan is divided into four wings: Programme, News, Engineering, Administration & Finance, Programme Wing deals with all aspects relating to programme conception, production and procurement at the national, regional, and local level. News Wing puts out news bulletins and other current affairs programmes at the national and regional level. Engineering Wing deals with all the hardware requirements of the entire network, including the space segment and the studios, transmitters etc. Administration & Finance Wing deals with the administrative and financial aspects including general administration, personnel management, budget and plan coordination. In most of the ways, the organizational structures of Doordarshan and All India Radio are more or less the same. But Doordarshan these days are growing bigger in terms of number of sections, subsections and staff of various kinds. The overall head of all the departments in Doordarshan is the Director General. The rank of the Director General of Doordarshan is equivalent to that of the Director General of All India Radio, while earlier it was not the case. In Doordarshan, the Director General heads the Department of Programme and Administration. His main job is to supervise, guide, govern and control the entire functioning of the department. He is assisted by: • • • • •

Additional Director General and Deputy Director General (Development) Deputy Director General (News and Current Affairs) Deputy Director General (Communication & film) Deputy Director General (Production & Transmission) Director (Finance & Personnel Control)

The Additional Director General looks after News and Current Affairs, Programme Policy, Programme Coordination, Planning, Public Relations, etc. The rank of Additional Director General is equivalent to that of Joint Secretary, Govt. of India. He is assisted by Controller of Programme (Policy), Controller of Programme (Coordination), Controller of Programme (Development), Public Relations Officer, etc. The Deputy Director General (Development) looks after the proper and sequencewise development of the programme and is supported by Director, Audience Research, Controller of Programme (Development) and Deputy Controller of Programme. The Deputy Director General (News & Current Affairs) looks after the administrative part of current newsgathering, news selection, news processing, and news evaluation and news presentation. Chief Editor News, Chief Producer News and News Editor support him. The Deputy Director General (Communication & Film) monitors the entire communication process of the organization. He is assisted by Controller of Programme (Communication) and Deputy Controller of Programme (films). The Deputy Director General (Production & Transmission) looks after the entire activities of Production and transmission and is supported by Deputy Director Administration in the discharge of his vast duties. The Director (Finance & Personal Control), guides, governs and controls the financial activities and personnel works and in the discharge of his vast duties. Deputy Director Administration and Senior Analyst support him. The Department of Engineering is headed by Engineer-in-Chief who is answerable to the Director General. The Engineer- in-Chief is responsible for the growth and maintenance of all the engineering and technical activities. In the discharge of his enormous duties, he is assisted by Chief Engineer (Project and Budget) and Chief Engineer (Maintenance and INSAT). The Chief Engineer (Project & Budget) supervises and prepares various projects and budgets and is supported by Director Engineering (Study Design Coordination with ISRO), Director Engineering (Teletext), Director Engineering (Purchase), Director Engineering (Progress and Budget), Director Engineering (Estimates & NLF) and Director Engineering (Transmitter Design).

In addition to that there is a large number of staff in Doordarshan which are directly associated with pre-production, production and postproduction. These staff members are• • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Programme Producer Programme Executive Video Engineer Vision Control Operator Lighting Engineer Cameraman Vision Mixer Studio Engineers Make-up Supervisors Script Designer Programme Assistant Production Assistant Audio Control Manager Mic Boom Operator Script Writer, etc.

1.10 TRADITIONAL MEDIA Traditional Folk Media Folk Media & Traditional media based on sound, image and sign language. These exist in the form of traditional music, drama, dance and puppetry, with unique features in every society, race and region. Various countries like India, have inherited several rich, effective popular and powerful folk media forms, which were developed over the ages and ensure the emotional integrity of the nation. The development of electronic media transformed the globe into a village but could not overshadow the folk media of different ethnic groups and regions. Folk and traditional media continue to play an important role in our society and the new electronic media are used to popularize some of the folk arts. Ingredients of folk media are given special projection in the mass media and as such folk media are being used in development communication (to bring about attitudinal and behavioral changes of the people) and advertising. Messages on issues like

agricultural development, primary health care and nutrition; education, women and child rights are projected through the folk media. The great majority in the rural areas enjoys, performances of the folk artists as a relief from the myriad of life. Many of them simply do not have access to modern forms of entertainment. Traditional folk media can be rightly called as the ‘people’s performances’ as it speaks of those performing arts which are cultural symbols of the people. These performing arts pulsate with life and slowly change through time. Since decades, they have been increasingly recognized as viable tools to impart development messages both through live performances and also in a form integrated with electronic mass media. They are thus rightly called as ‘Traditional Folk media’ for communication. For millions of people living in remote areas in developing countries, to which information is to be quickly imparted, mass media channels of sound and sight do hold glamour but often enough they mask the message. Thus, traditional folk media has been persuaded to come out of their shell to give a personal touch to the otherwise impersonal mass media programmes. Behavioral changes are most easily brought about by personal interaction and traditional folk media are personal forms of communication, of entertainment. These forms of art are a part of the way of life of a community and provide acceptable means of bringing development issues into the community on its own terms. Traditional folk media are playing a meaningful role in the affairs of developing countries like Asia and Africa. Traditional folk media are rich in variety, readily available and economically viable. Men and women of different age groups relish them. They command the confidence of the rural masses, as they are live. They are theme-carriers by nature, not simply as vehicles of communication but as games of recreating and sharing a common world of emotions, ideals and dreams. Also, traditional folk media are in a ‘face to face situation’ between the communicator and the receiver of the message, a situation which energies discussion that may lead to conviction and motivation. In developing country like India, traditional folk media have proven to be successful mass-motivators. During the years before the advent of the sound and sight channels of mass media, the traditional folk media not only reflected the joys and sorrows of the people, but also inspired the mass during the times of stress and strain. They played a significant role in the freedom movement of India. Since the

country has achieved independence, selected folk media have been effectively harnessed for communication of new ‘development messages’. Mass media have extended the area of coverage of a folk performance, while traditional folk media, with their inspiring color and costume, dance and music; have enriched the content of the mass media channels. Traditional folk performances like ritualistic dances, religious songs and mythology based rural plays, though highly popular, have proved unsuitable to absorb and reflect new messages on population, health and hygiene. Communicators, therefore, have to test different categories of folk performances to identify the ones that are flexible enough to absorb development messages to meet the contemporary needs. Flexibility is the most important factor, which determines the viability of a folk medium for rural communication. Some traditional folk media in India are: Tamasha, Nautanki, Jatra, Bhavai, Puppetry, Ramlila & Raaslila, Street Theatre, Pawala, Keertana, and others.

Music is the most popular folk & traditional media form and the various types of folk music include mystic songs (baul, marfati, murshidi), devotional songs (hamd, nat, shyama sangeet, kirtan), ballad (palagan, puthipath), community songs (jari, sari, bhaoaiya) and snake-charmers song. Folk songs on hopes, joys, sorrows, love, and separation composed by ordinary people are still popular. The traditional melodies and lyrics of these songs were enriched by kabials (lyricist and composer of folk songs), gayens (singers), dohars (co-singers) and musicians. Ganasangeet (peoples' songs) is the latest form developed by the cultural activists working for the welfare of the oppressed people. This type of song carries messages on the rights of the oppressed people and a strong sense of patriotism. Ganasangeet had inspired the whole nation during the wars. Instrumental music has its own glory in folk songs. No one can think of folk music without indigenous instruments like ektara, dotara, sarinda, flute and drum. Folk & traditional media are very effective in communicating messages on important national issues, largely because it needs a small troupe, the costs in instruments, transport and manpower are moderate or low, and the outreach is wide, particularly through performances in hats (market places in rural areas) and bazaars. Patriotic forces during the anti-British movement used to organize such groups to motivate the people in favour of Swadeshi movement. Simultaneously, during the Second World War the British Indian government constituted a song publicity unit to mobilize public opinion in their favour. The governments of Pakistan, India and Bangladesh later strengthened the unit. India has created an

organization named the Sangeet-Natak Academy (the Academy of music and drama), the main responsibility of which is to perform motivational programmes throughout the country. The most popular form of folk drama is Jatra, an opera type performance in an open stage. The jatra is performed before rural people of all ages and both genders during autumn and winter nights. Jatra, being a product of mass culture and having undergone a process of evolution, represents different trends of the society. In the past, the villagers themselves performed it. They used to build and decorate the stage collectively with great enthusiasm and spend their own money for costumes and props. The organization of a drama in any village was a great event, especially after the harvesting season. Later, jatradals began to be formed commercially to put on professional performances. People like jatra because of its communicability and the relationship between the performers and the audience. Simplicity and lively and informal presentation are the key features that have made jatra so popular. Nowadays, modern songs and dances presented as fillers between the acts are an added attraction. Puppetry is perhaps the most outstanding traditional folk medium that still exists in its original form. The puppet shows are used for educational and promotional purposes and are very effective in development communication. Painting on clothes and Pottery products is a fast diminishing form of folk traditional media. In the old days, indigenous artists portrayed characters or reflected events of Hindu mythology as well as from folk tales of Muslim origin in their paintings on cloths or pottery. Quacks, village doctors and medicine sellers often use the traditional cloth painting to promote indigenous medicines in the rural markets. Quilts embroidered with the motifs of flowers, leaves and birds are still popular. The rally is another ancient means of transmitting public information. In the early days, drummers from the court were assigned to announce the venue and the schedule of a rally. Religious functions & motivational gatherings are frequently used to inform and motivate people. Gatherings for group prayers like mass congregations and indoor meetings of particular groups, unions or faiths are also effective forums for building up public opinion. Although new forms of print and electronic media are gradually replacing the traditional or folk media, oral communication is still very effective.

CHECK YOUR PROGRESS Q1. What do you understand by Traditional Media? Q2. What is the scope of Traditional Media in a country like India? Q3. List some forms of Traditional Folk media in India. Traditional & Electronic Media The traditional media is slowly transforming because of the impact of the more sophisticated, more glamorous and more ‘powerful’ electronic media. Even while bold attempts to preserve the original forms continue to make some headway, principally by the National School of Drama, and directors like E. Alkazi, Girish Karnad, Karanth, Habib Tanvir, Badal Sircar, and those of IPTA (Indian People’s Theaters Association), the change is evident. IPTA, is one of the oldest performing art groups in the country. Indian cinema, performing arts like music and theatre and now even television have drawn their many personalities from IPTA. The vulgarization of the rural forms has already started with the introduction of film-style song and dance in the jatra, tamasha and nautanki. At the same time it is heartening to see how skillfully the new media are exploiting the traditional and folk media forms to convey contemporary messages on radio and television particularly in programmes for farmers, workers and rural people. Such approach and cooperation from the electronic media will strengthen the efficacy of both technology based electronic media traditional media from our cultural heritage. Thus, a happy and satisfying combination of the modern technosavvy electronic media and the traditional media would make for a practical approach, though it must be seen to it that the folk forms are not crushed in the unequal competition with the new media or the electronic media. It is, however, unlikely that the electronic media will completely replace the traditional media; rather, what is more likely is that they will appropriate the folk media for their own political and business purposes.

1.11 SUMMARY The term "mass media" refers to the means of public communication reaching a large audience. When members of the general public refer to "the media" they are usually referring to the mass media, or to the news media, which is a section of the mass media.

The various types of mass media are: •

• • •

• •

Television (cable, network, satellite, etc.) Radio Film & Video Print (newspapers, magazines, direct mail, etc.) Photography Electronic (E-mail, the Web, etc.)

The date of history’s first broadcast accepted by most historians of the subject is the first radio newscast, which occurred in 1909 in San Jose, California- some 40 miles south of San Francisco. There, Dr. Charles David Herrold built a tiny experimental radio transmitter and hooked it to an aerial which was strung over downtown streets between numerous buildings. Over this spider- web of steel, the doctor broadcast news and other programs to friends in the area to whom he had provided free crystal sets. Mass media in India is that part of the Indian media which aims to reach a wide audience. Besides the news media, which includes print, radio and television, the internet is playing an increasing role, along with the growth of the Indian blogging community. Television first came to India [named as ‘Doordarshan’ (DD)] on Sept 15, 1959 as the National Television Network of India. The first telecast started on Sept 15, 1959 in New Delhi. The Indian television system is one of the most extensive systems in the world. Terrestrial broadcasting, which has been the sole preserve of the government, provides television coverage to over 90% of India's 900 million people, setting the stage for India to develop into one of the world's largest and most competitive television environments. A combination of a number of discoveries by technicians and scientist from different countries gave rise to the development of wireless telegraphy and later to radio broadcasting. It took ten years for wireless telegraphy, to become a broadcasting system. First, the World War prompted the industrialization of wireless telegraphy, secondly in the United States the radio created a communication environment in which amateurs could operate freely. Newspaper industry in any country is related to the beginning of printing press and it was Johann Guttenberg who invented printing press in 1455. Thus in India too, the beginning of newspaper is related to the beginning of the press. The Portuguese introduced the printing press in Goa, in 1557. British East India Company brought

about the printing press in India and first press was strolled at Bombay in 1674. Ironically, the first printing press was strolled in 1674, yet there was no newspaper being published for another 100years. There was a boom of publication of magazines in India in the year 1980s. This development could not be traced in English but in the major Indian languages as well. In fact, it is seen that nearly four out of every five Indian periodicals are in the Indian languages, and they have a circulation which is nearly three fourth of the total circulation. Before the actual beginning of cinema in India, there was the growth of musical dramas, the theatre, jatra in Bengal. Music, dance, song were an integral part of these performing traditions, this was the heritage of Sanskrit drama and later popular folk performing traditions such as the ram lila, the ras lila, the nautanki. So, when the first ‘cinematographic exhibitions’ of the Lumiere Brothers were held in Bombay on July 7, 1896, Indian dramatists, photographers, magicians, musicians and singers saw in them great potential for the re-telling of Indian myths and folklore. Prasar Bharati (Broadcasting Corporation of India) is the public service broadcaster in the country, with Akashwani (All India Radio) and Doordarshan as its two constituents. It came into existence on 23rd November 1997, with a mandate to organize and conduct public broadcasting services to inform, educate and entertain the public and to ensure a balanced development of broadcasting on radio and television. Folk Media & Traditional media based on sound, image and sign language. These exist in the form of traditional music, drama, dance and puppetry, with unique features in every society, race and region. Various countries like India, have inherited several rich, effective popular and powerful folk media forms, which were developed over the ages and ensure the emotional integrity of the nation. The development of electronic media transformed the globe into a village but could not overshadow the folk media of different ethnic groups and regions.

1.12 EXERCISES AND QUESTIONS Q1. Discuss the classification of various mass media. Q2. Trace the origin and history of Television in India.

Q3. Discuss the importance and development of Radio in India. Q4. Write a short note on the emergence of newspaper in India. Q5. Trace the history of Indian Cinema. Q6. Write a brief account of the development of Magazines in India. Q7. Briefly state the organizational structure of Doordarshan and AIR. Q8. What is the significance of Traditional Media in India? How can we compare it to the advanced Electronic Media?

1.13 FURTHER READING 1. 2.

Mass Communication in India Keval J Kumar Audio Visual Journalism by B.N. Ahuja