Aastha Sinha
1959, the year when Television was introduced in India and Doordarshan became the first ever channel to be launched in our country. It is an Indian public service broadcaster founded by the Government of India, owned by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting and one of Prasar Bharati’s two divisions.
Initially the channel was broadcasted in black and white format. The year 1982 was a landmark year in the history of television as Doordardarshan started running its colored broadcast. Colour television began in India with the live telecast of the Independence Day speech by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi on 15 August of that year, followed by the colour telecast of the 1982 Asian Games in Delhi.
In the initial days, only news bulletins were telecasted, that too in the evening, and there used to be just a black and white disturbed screen for the rest part of the day. The craze for Doordarshan was such that people would gather in front of the television as if there was some fair taking place to watch whatever would be running on the television screen. Ramayana was among the earliest mythological serial to be telecasted. It would be broadcasted every Sunday from 9 A.M. onwards and the cities would go silent as people would rush to the houses of whoever had a television to enjoy the historic show. Hum Log and Buniyaad were the earliest soap operas to be telecasted and became household favourites in no time. Krishi Darshan, the only program about the backbone of a nation- farmers debuted on Doordarshan on 26 January 1967, and is Indian television’s longest running program.
With the launch of so many private channels such as Zee and Star that provided entertainment in a more dramatic way, Doordarshan began to lose its charm as people turned towards the private channels. However, During COVID, Doordarshan regained its charm as it started retelecasting BR Chopra’s Mahabharata, and Ramanand Sagar’s Ramayana which are certainly the best epics made in the history of Indian television. Shows such as Buniyaad were also retelecasted that left all the middle aged and old people nostalgic.
Doordarshan is often considered as the mouthpiece of Indian government which is used by them to disseminate information and policies of the state. It is quite different from the commercial news channels as they dont believe in creating a drama while presenting the news, rather present information in a simplified way. It now has a number of different channels, each catering to different purposes such as DD News for news updates and DD Sports for live sports coverage.
We have 100s of channels now, but the magic that Doordarshan had, and still continues to hold is unmatchable. Doordarshan takes pride in being the pioneer of Indian television which has been the one stop destination for all our desires- education, news, soap opera, music, mythology and what not.
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