Stating that Prasar Bharati had entered into a collaboration with IIT-Kanpur, where a pilot project was underway to work out the feasibility of direct-to-mobile broadcasting, Prasar Bharati CEO Shashi Shekhar Vempati has said that if this effort was successful, smartphones would be able to receive broadcast content in the near future.

Speaking on Wednesday at the 10th CII Big Picture Summit, which is being live streamed online, Vempati said in his keynote address, “In the event of a high-viewership event such as the IPL, there is no reason why millions of users need to receive that content on a unicast mode through the Internet. If this works, all of that content can be delivered directly on broadcast frequencies to the people on their smartphones or smart TVs.”

The CEO of India’s national broadcaster pointed out that digitisation was one of the key changes that had taken place over the last three or four years since he had joined the public broadcaster, an IANS report stated.

“Practically every Doordarshan channel and All India Radio station now has a digital presence spanning multiple platforms, be it YouTube for livestreaming or on social media to engage with the audience,” he said, and added that the Prasar Bharati app, which has 200-plus radio streams, was one of a kind in the world, for, irrespective of where one was in the world, one could listen to one’s hometown radio station.

Vempati also dwelt on at length about the public broadcaster scaling new heights of content, creativity and innovation by converting archival footage into modern shareable file formats.

Convergence of television and radio content through technology was the way forward, he said.

CII organises the Big Picture Summit every year to discuss opportunities and challenges of the country’s media and entertainment sector, apart from global trends. This year’s theme was: ‘Scaling New Heights of Content, Creativity and Innovation’.