On September 15, 1959, television was first broadcast in India on a trial basis for three days a week. Only instructional broadcasts for a small region around New Delhi were included in the scope of the programmes. There were 180 tele clubs set up within a 40-kilometre radius of the transmitter. Every club received a television from UNESCO. The engineering and the software for the programming were supplied by All India Radio.
Due to two factors, the Indian government decided to establish TV on an experimental basis, firstly, to provide staff with this new technological training and, secondly, to learn how television may promote community development.
At this early stage, television was largely seen as a teaching instrument rather than an entertainment medium. The television project received financial help from the Indian government. Teachers' television programmes first debuted in 1961. Television programmes started to be broadcast regularly in 1965. During this year, a daily, one-hour service was initiated.
1972-1982
The medium experienced a tremendous expansion between 1972 and 1982. Bombay received television services in 1972. The Satellite Instructional Television Experiment (SITE), which was launched in 1975–1976, brought television to 2,400 villages in underdeveloped regions of Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, and Orissa.
One of the world's largest communication experiments, according to descriptions of this initiative Television broadcasting was separated from All India Radio in 1976 and placed under a separate agency called Doordarshan.
AFTER 1982
The colour transition to Doordarshan began on August 15, 1982. Additionally, a regular satellite link between Delhi and various transmitters was established this year. The Asian Games that were hosted in New Delhi in 1982 served as the primary catalyst for these improvements.
Since 1982, television infrastructure has been quickly increasing, and for a brief time, the nation received a new transmitter every single day. Over time, there have been a lot more transmitters and centres for producing television programmes. In New Delhi, a second channel was introduced on November 19, 1984. Later, the Metro entertainment channel launched on April 1, 1993. Doordarshan currently broadcasts content on 19 channels. The main channel, or DD-1, is Doordarshan's flagship.
SATELLITE INSTRUCTIONAL TELEVISION EXPERIMENT (SITE)
Since its foundation in 1959, Indian Television has produced content that is aligned with the social, agricultural, economic, and political objectives of the government. Programming executives followed the lead of Indian politicians and ignored television's entertaining appeal in favour of its instructional and informative value.
When Doordarshan, still a part of AIR, started the Satellite Instructional Television Experiment (SITE), one of the most ambitious undertakings in television history, this predisposition for moral, useful, and instructive programming became even more obvious. Vikram Sarabhai, a renowned physicist and the head of the Indian Atomic Energy Commission, was the inspiration behind SITE. In order to introduce satellite television to India, Sarbhai urged the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) of the United States to collaborate. He also authorised India to use the NASA Application Technology Satellite (ATS-6) for the duration of the one-year trial.
Doordarshan transmitted farm, health and hygiene, and family planning programmes to 2400 villages in rural India via the ATS-6 satellite from August 1, 1975, to July 31, 1976. Additionally, entertainment programmes, primarily featuring rural art, music, and dancing, were broadcast on SITE. The majority of the time, because so few people had their own TVs, they watched SITE programming in public spaces with TVs that were specifically set up for viewing.
The main goal of SITE was to bring together the various and multilingual audiences of the country by exposing them to one another's cultures, in addition to educating people about solutions to the challenges facing the nation.
At production facilities in New Delhi, Hyderabad, and Cuttack, SITE programmes were created with the assistance of university professors, social workers, and other professionals. A division of the DAE called the Indian Space and Research Organisation (ISRO) also contributed to the production of some of the shows. The televisions used for the experiment were installed and maintained by ISRO as well. Generally speaking, these sets were just regular television sets with a front-end converter and a chicken-mesh antenna for receiving satellite signals.
The outcomes of SITE were less impressive than its plans. A 1980 assessment by Krishan Sondhi said that the farm schemes had less of an effect than anticipated. Because they had already learned about the improvements via AIR's farm bulletins and programming, farmers in SITE viewing areas were not more innovative than farmers who were not exposed to SITE programmes. Another flaw was that the farm programmes were not useful to farmers since they were not adjusted to the vastly different farming methods used in the SITE viewing zones. The family planning and health efforts did not yield notable advancements either.
PRASAR BHARATHI
Since its founding, Doordarshan has been a government-controlled institution. When television experimentation began in India in 1959, Doordarshan was merely an addendum to All India Radio. Despite being cut off from All India Radio in 1976, Doordarshan now has direct oversight from the Indian government's Ministry of Information and Broadcasting.
The different governments at the centre not only had influence over the electronic media but also used it to advance their own covert goals. In order to stifle opposition and advance personality cults, political leaderships have allegedly misused All India Radio and Doordarshan (television) for blatantly partisan and personal purposes, according to I.B. Singh. This has been true for each and every New Delhi-based government since they have come into power.
The quest for broadcast media autonomy was gaining more and more momentum. In order to provide the country's broadcast media autonomy, the National Front Government, led by Mr. V.P. Singh, tabled the bill in the first Parliamentary session in January 1990. The Prasar Bharathi Act, however, was not implemented for seven years.
Finally, on September 22, 1997, the Act became operative. In order to give Doordarshan and All India Radio autonomy, the Prasar Bharathi Board was established.
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