New Delhi: Doordarshan News, the dedicated news channel of the national broadcaster, is set to lose its bilingual status. Highly-placed sources stated that DD News will soon be relaunched in Hindi and subsequently a new dedicated news channel in English will also be launched. Currently, the channel broadcasts news in Hindi and English.
Sources stated that due to its bilingual status the channel has been unable to evolve a dedicated viewership. “How can dedicated viewership be evolved if the channel switches from airing Hindi to English at prime time. It is unheard of across the globe,” sources said. Interestingly, at the 8-9 pm slot Hindi news is aired while at 9-10 pm slot news in English is aired.
It was also pointed out that it was a unique practice in the country, and perhaps even in the world, as all private channels did not practice airing news of different languages on a single channel. “All broadcasters prefer to have different channels to air news bulletins in different languages,” sources added.
And with Doordarshan’s reach and resources, it was felt that a separate channel was the need of the hour. The decision to make DD News serve only Hindi audience was taken beacuse the language has the highest number of speakers in the country (over 400 million). Another channel dedicated to English language viewers will be launched soon after the re launch of DD News, sources said.
Interestingly, the BJP-led government in the country has been brought to office at the strength of MPs returned to Lok Sabha largely from the Hindi belt with a figure as high as 90 per cent.
The change of bilingual status of DD News is expected to cause problems as the Narendra Modi government could come under criticism from non Hindi speaking states, though a majority of states have dedicated news channels for their regional language needs.
