NEW DELHI: Stressing that revenue generation is not the main objective of Prasar Bharati, the Parliament was today told that the pubcaster is generating its revenue through Internal Extra Budgetary Resources (IEBR) to meet its operating expenses.
Minister of state for information and broadcasting Rajyavardhan Rathore said in reply to a question that the government was providing 100 per cent salary support to Prasar Bharati, apart from plan grant for creation of capital assets and content development.
He said that Prasar Bharati’s primary mandate was to organise and conduct public broadcasting service with the intent to inform, educate and entertain the public and to ensure a balanced development of broadcasting on radio and television in the country.
Listing various achievements as an outcome of measures taken in recent years, he said the capability of the direct to home platform FreeDish had been increased from 59 to 104 TV channels of which 80 are already on air, and orders had been placed for implementation of Indian Conditional Access System (iCAS).
(DD sources told indiantelevision.com that these 80 were on MPEG-2 , while the remainder will be on MPEG-4 which has been tested and the auction process to fill those slots has already been initiated.)
Apart from DD Kisan, the minister added, that 24-hour Doordarshan channels had been launched in Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Saptagiri from Vijaywada.
The technical facility for launch of new TV Channel DD Arunprabha for the north east had been completed.
Earth stations had been set up at Indore, Rajkot, Vijayawada and Jalpaiguri and the earth station at Leh, Chandigarh, Hisar, Panaji, and Port Blair (except RF equipment) had been modernised.
Other steps included:
High Definition television (HDTV) studios set up at Delhi and Mumbai; digitisation of 39 studios; commissioning of a permanent studio set up at Dehradun; multichannel automated playback facility set up and installation of multi camera studio production facility in HDTV format in progress at Central Production Centre in Delhi; Media Asset Management for archive system set up at Kolkata; HDTV outside broadcast (OB) vans supplied at Delhi and Mumbai; and six Digital Satellite News Gathering (DSNG) vans deployed.
Referring to status of transmitters, he said 19 digital High Power Transmitters (Digital Video Broadcasting-and Generation Terrestrial) (DVB-T2) had been supplied and 16 digital HPTs commissioned; four HDTV transmitters supplied and installed; a HPT commissioned in Cannanore, apart from a Very Low Power Transmitter (VLPT) at Joginder Nagar.
Ageing HPTs had been replaced by new 10 KW HPTs at 14 locations and 111 auto-mode LPTs supplied & commissioned.
