Digital channels of Prasar Bharati across Doordarshan and Akashvani have registered over a 100% growth. These channels have clocked in over a billion digital views with over 6 billion digital watch minutes.
As per a statement released by the government, the NewsOnAir app has added over 2.5 million users and had registered over 300 million views with live radio streaming which has over 200 streams. Along with Doordarshan National and Doordarshan News, Marathi news from DD Sahyadri, Kannada programming on DD Chandana, Bangla news from DD Bangla and Telugu programming on DD Saptagiri also feature in top 10 digital channels of Prasar Bharati.
During the nationwide lockdown due to coronavirus pandemic, Doordarshan brought back the legendary television shows Mahabharat and Ramayan which were first aired in the 90s. When the first episode of Ramayan was re-released, Doordarshan website had crashed and it became top searched item on Google in India. Following the epic series, Doordarshan also brought back Shaktimaan, the Indian superhero.
2020 was also the year when Doordarshan threw epic shade. When China wrote to Doordarshan protesting Taiwan coverage, Doordarshan aired programs on Tibet as well.
Pakistanis watch Doordarshan
Interestingly, amongst the international audience for Doordarshan’s digital channels, Pakistan tops the list in 2020. Pakistan accounts for the second highest digital audience for DD and AIR content after domestic audience from within India. United States of America was a close second for international audience.
Doordarshan hits in 2020
Amongst the most popular videos in 2020, PM Modi’s interaction with school children, the Republic Day parade of 2020 and rare footage of Shakuntala Devi from the archives were most popular.
In 2020, a dedicated Prasar Bharati YouTube channel for all Sanskrit language related content was also launched. It showed radio and TV content produced in Sanskrit. Similarly, the dedicated channel for PM Modi’s monthly radio show Mann Ki Baat also had a rapid growth.
Further, rare archival content of great historical value, available only with DD-AIR, are being digitised and uploaded on Prasar Bharati Archives YouTube channel. For the said purpose, a dedicated team works to dig out musical, cultural, political content from thousands of tapes recorded over many decades in various stations of DD and AIR across the country. Prasar Bharati is striving to make these content are available in public domain with easy access to all for academic and research purposes.
