Doordarshan the national television service of India has revamped its entire site (www.ddindia.com) making it more userfriendly for a consumer target. Its sections include latest News, Bollywood beat, Explore India - Travel and Tourism, Program Bazaar and a discussion forum.
While latest news is a first hand service of India related content, Bollywood beat is a database of songs sung by Bollywood stars available in Realmedia. Other sections include Matters of India and Matters of Faith which are under construction. DD world live telecasts are also available in clippings. Program Bazaar provides information of programs whose rights DD posseses. A discussion forum has been set up that caters to three categories sports, politics and law and order. However interaction requires you to register first. Salient features include a polling session and a daily programming schedule (also under construction).

The site is powered by DSF Internet Services Pvt. Ltd. whose client roster includes All India Radio, Doordarshan, BMW, Motorola, GE-India, ICMR, Usha International, Jawaharlal Nehru University, India Info, Mantra Online, and many more.

Doordarshan currently has 49 studio centers, operates 21 channels with a network of 1150 transmitters, and reaches 87 percent of the country‘s one billion people.

They are calling it a courtesy call. But Star TV chairman James Murdoch‘s visit to the Capital to bow-wow with the powers that be comes at a time when lobbying is taking place thick and fast to decide what shape Indian broadcasting and convergence legislation should take.
Murdoch met up with a galaxy of politicians right from I&B minister Sushma Swaraj to old Star TV man Pramod Mahajan. He is also scheudled to get into a huddle with law minister Arun Jaitley and finance minister Yashwant Sinha over the next couple of days.

Sources indicate he is pretty gung-ho on India now, especially since noises about creating legislation are being made.

Star TV officials point out that one of the major decisions that has been taken is to once again to surf the DTH waves, and there are possibilities that its old relationship with old ally, the P.K. Mittal group, may once again be revived even though the DTH MoU has since lapsed between the two.