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New
Delhi: Doordarshan, India's public broadcaster, has approved
163 proposals for programmes to be telecast on DD Urdu chanel,
following a directive from the Prasar Bharati board on Monday.
Each
of the proposals will be given 13 episodes each. DD on Wednesday
placed on its website the list of 163 serials.
The
board had on 6 August authorized Doordarshan to immediately
proceed to build a bank of programmes for DD Urdu for the
next six to eight months.
The
Prasar Bharati has decided to grant phase-wise approval to
the commissioned programmes for the DD Urdu channel. Prasar
Bharati Chief Executive Officer Jawhar Sircar had told indiantelevision.com
that the details of the selected programmes covering all six
genres to be commissioned by the pubcaster in the first phase
would be uploaded soon on the DD website.
"It
was a long and complex matter. Besides budget considerations
too had to be balanced", said Prasar Bharati Board Chairperson
Mrinal Pande.
Out
of a total of 1046 proposals received for commissioning of
Urdu programmes, a total of 579 proposals were shortlisted
by the three Committees under the chairmanships of M. K. Kaw,
Prof. Shahid Mehndi, and former DG Shiv Sharma.
The
Board felt that approvals in respect of all these 579 proposals
was not feasible, not only because of the huge expenditure
involved but also because of issues relating to quality control,
limitations on slotting and maintaining a balance between
various categories and genres. The proposals shortlisted on
minimum benchmark basis, final selection for the first phase
of commissioning was on the basis of fund availability and
requirements in various genres, as per the fixed point chart
during the current financial year.
Although
Doordarshan's DD Urdu commenced in November 2007 and over
1000 proposals for new programmes were submitted in two batches
by around 800 producers since 2009, the channel is only beaming
repeat programmes or those taken from DD Kashmir for more
than three years.
According
to the producers, proposals for commissioning programmes had
been invited twice, and each proposal had to be accompanied
with a processing fee of Rs 25,000.
Brief
proposals were invited up to 21 August 2009, wherein approximately
639 proposals were received. Presentations for the same were
conducted from September 2010 to November 2010 before a duly
(single) constituted committee.
The second Commissioning was notified without concluding the
earlier exercise by making minor modification in the brief,
but without notifying any reasons for this action.
The
proposals were invited up to 1 October 2010 and up to 430
fresh proposals were submitted. The presentations for the
same were conducted from 26 December 2011 to 23 February 2012
before three Committees comprising three members each.
The producers claim that the action by the public broadcaster
has not only harmed the interests of Urdu, but harmed the
image of the broadcaster itself.
They said each of the producers spent Rs 200,000 to Rs 500,000
each and had undergone several hardships. Apart from the processing
fee of Rs. 25,000 for each proposal, the producers had spent
money on reputed writers, directors and language experts,
expenses were made during the presentations including air/rail
travel, hotel and local conveyance for the experts were undertaken
twice, money was paid for acquiring of rights of novels /published
works; re-payment of the same to maintain the status quo so
that the proposal still remains viable; and professional fees
(although token) were paid to the creative team to remain
with the project, apart from payments to language experts.
The
formal announcement about DD Urdu came on 15 August 2006.
The channel has been on air for 24 hours from 14 November
2007. The Channel's mandate was to encapsulate heritage, culture,
literature, information, education and societal issues specific
to the target audience.
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