Doordarshan, Government of India’s national channel is really a great one covering the entire country through High power Transmitters, Low Power Transmitters and Satellites. Its well designed Logo, set against its in-house ’Blue’ colour was conceptualised and done by the students of the National Institute of Design at Ahmedabad, and the Faculty of NID only did some cosmetic improvements. The Logo was field tested by Visual Communicators. Graphic Designers and Communication Scholars. As a member of the third category I had wholeheartedly supported the Logo design and voted for its country-wide adoption.
Doordarshan’s slogan ’’Satyam, Shivam, Sunderam’’ depicts India’s philosophy and goal. The slogan has another message too: DD is for every one, the high and the low, the educated and the uneducated, the young and the old, the women and the men. Here comes the language used in Doordarshan. Sardar Patel, as the Home Minister had written a historical letter in 1948 from Pillani (Rajasthan) to R. R. Diwakar, his Minister of State in Information & Broadcasting. In that letter he had written about the language policy for Akashvani, because there was no TV in India. He had said that the language to be used in Radio should be simple and chaste so that it is understood by all. It holds good for DD even now.
I like the language used in DD Bangla. It is very simple Bengali understood by one and all. But the language used in the Oriya news bulletins coming from DD Bhubaneswar is highly Sanskritised, and I as an Oriya sometimes fail to understand it.Our News Readers like Sukanya Balakrishnan, Nalin Kohli and Sunit Tandon (English) and Mrinal Pande and Rahul Dev (Hindi) can match with their counterparts anywhere in the world. I have experience in training the News Readers and News Editors. Once at the Indian Institute of Mass Communication. New Delhi, I had organised such a training with the help of USA’s CNN. With so many sponsored programmes these days, it is difficult to assure programme quality, as the Ads have a control on the programme. Just before the evening news at 7, there is a vulgar AD on the Masti Condom.
I am sure, Sm. Sushma Swaraj, Minister of I&B does not know about this AD, otherwise she must have done something. With a huge resource base in terms of men and materials, DD in the context of Prasar Bharti has a very bright future indeed. Three Cheers DD !