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India’s public broadcaster Prasar Bharati facilitates delivery and supports 357 educational TV channels, including co-branded ones, on Doordarshan’s DTH service, FreeDish, the government has said.
“Prasar Bharati has made 51 co-branded educational TV channels available to the viewers on DD FreeDish, as per MoU signed with Bhaskaracharya National Institute for Space Applications and Geo-Informatics, Ministry of Electronics & IT,” Minister for Information and Broadcasting Anurag Thakur informed Rajya Sabha last week.
These channels, according to him, can be viewed across the country free of cost with the help of a small sized dish and set-top box of DD FreeDish.
Replying to a query from a fellow parliamentarian on educational TV channels promoted by the federal government, Thakur elaborated that transmission of “306 educational TV channels on DD FreeDish has been further facilitated”.
Prasar Bharati is India’s national broadcaster, and is the parent of Doordarshan and All India Radio.
According to the MIB Minister, the National Council of Educational Research & Training has “informed that the expansion of ‘One Class-One TV Channel’ programme of PM eVIDYA is intended to enable all States/UTs to provide supplementary education in regional languages”.
“Of the 200 channels of PM eVIDYA, each of the States and UTs have been allotted 5 and 1 channels, respectively. NCERT has been allotted 14 channels, while CBSE, NVS and KVS have been allotted 1 channel each. National Institute of Open Schooling has been allotted 4 channels and Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship has been allotted 6 channels for imparting skill-based education,” Thakur explained further.
He said test transmissions of e-content on these channels has been initiated and time slots on various regional language satellite services channels/State network channels of Doordarshan Networks are provided to various State Governments/State Government bodies by Prasar Bharati as per their requests for telecast of educational programmes.
It is a constant endeavour of Doordarshan to modernize and upgrade its infrastructure, including digitalization and adoption of new technologies at par with industry standards, Thakur said.
