NEW DELHI: Prasar Bharati is looking at different ways to exploit music in its vast archives by taking it online.

Speaking exclusively to Indiantelevision.com, Prasar Bharati CEO Jawhar Sircar said that Prasar Bharati was examining how music available in the archives of All India Radio (AIR) and Doordarshan (DD) could be exploited by putting it on the digital platform.

Sircar informed that DD alone had over 200,000 hours of recordings in its archives. Of this, 4,000 hours was ready to be published and another 20,000 had been digitally restored.

Additionally, he said that the pubcaster was also considering a proposal to provide a scroll free-of-charge to cultural organizations to announce their forthcoming programmes on DD Bharati.

On a separate note, Prasar Bharati has also instructed the news wings of both AIR and DD to cover all important events simultaneously and then share the inputs. Sircar said that the instruction had first been given over a year ago and admitted that there were still cases where this was not being done. He said that the directive included events like lectures or lecture demonstrations, biographical works, and the best performances of any artiste.

Responding to another query, Sircar said that short wave radio had to be kept alive for diplomatic reasons but the medium wave was gradually being moved to FM so that all 850 million mobile users in the country will get access to this. Vividh Bharati had already been put on FM.