Television in India

The television industry in India is very diverse and produces thousands of programs in many of the Indian languages. More than half of all Indian households own a television. As of 2016, the country had over 857 channels of which 184 were pay channels. The Hindi, Telugu and Tamil language television industries are by far the largest television industries in India.

History

In January 1950, ''The Indian Express'' reported that a television was put up for demonstration at an exhibition in the Teynampet locality of Madras (now Chennai) by B. Sivakumaran, a student of electrical engineering. A letter was scanned and its image displayed on a cathode ray tube screen. The report said that "It may be this is not the whole of television but it is certainly the most significant link in the system" and added that the demonstration of the sort could be the "first in India".

The first TV transmitter of India was installed in the Electronics and Telecommunications engineering department of the Government Engineering College, Jabalpur, on 24 October 1951.

In Srinagar, television was first used in the house of the Jan family, which was a huge milestone for industrialization. Terrestrial television in India started with the experimental telecast starting in Delhi on 15 September 1959 with a small transmitter and a makeshift studio. Daily transmission began in 1965 as a part of All India Radio (AIR). Television service was later extended to Bombay (Now Mumbai) and Amritsar in 1972. Up until 1975, only seven Indian cities had television services. Satellite Instructional Television Experiment (SITE) was an important step taken by India to use television for development. The programmes were mainly produced by Doordarshan (DD) which was then a part of the AIR. The telecast happened twice a day, in the mornings and evenings. Other than information related to agriculture, health and family planning were the other important topics dealt with in these programmes. Entertainment was also included in the form of dance, music, drama, folk and rural art forms. Television services were separated from radio in 1976. National telecast was introduced in 1982. In the same year, color television was introduced in the Indian market.

Indian small screen programming began in the early 1980s. During this time, there was only one national channel, the government-owned Doordarshan. The ''Ramayana'' and ''Mahabharata'', both based on the Indian epics of the same names, were the first major television series produced. They notched up world record in viewership numbers. By the late 1980s, more people began to own television. Though there was a single channel, television programming had reached saturation. Hence the government opened up another channel which had part national programming and part regional. This channel was known as DD 2, later renamed DD Metro. Both channels were broadcast terrestrially. In 1997, Prasar Bharati, a statutory autonomous body was established. Doordarshan along with the AIR were converted into government corporations under Prasar Bharati. The Prasar Bharati Corporation was established to serve as the public service broadcaster of the country which would achieve its objectives through AIR and Doordashan. This was a step towards greater autonomy for Doordarshan and AIR. However, Prasar Bharati has not succeeded in shielding Doordarshan from government control.

The transponders of the American satellites PAS 1 and PAS-4 helped in the transmission and telecast of DD. An international channel called DD International was started in 1995 and it telecasts programs for 19 hours a day to foreign countries-via PAS-4 to Europe, Asia and Africa, and via PAS-1 to North America.

The 1980s was the era of DD with shows like '' Hum Log'' (1984-1985), ''Wagle Ki Duniya'' (1988), ''Buniyaad'' (1986–1987) and comedy shows like ''Yeh Jo Hai Zindagi'' (1984), other than the widely popular dramas like ''Ramayan'' (1987–1988) and ''Mahabharat'' (1989–1990) glued millions to Doordarshan and later on '' Chandrakanta''(1994–1996). Hindi film songs based programs like ''Chitrahaar'', ''Rangoli'', ''Superhit Muqabla'' and crime thrillers like ''Karamchand'', ''Byomkesh Bakshi''. Shows targeted at children included ''Divyanshu ki Kahaniyan'', ''Vikram Betal'', '' Malgudi Days'', ''Tenali Rama''. It is also noted that Bengali filmmaker Prabir Roy had the distinction of introducing colour television coverage in India in February–March 1982 during the Nehru Cup, a football tournament which was held at Eden Gardens, Kolkata, with five on-line camera operation, before Doordarshan started the same during the Delhi Asian Games in November that year.

The central government (Congress Govt) launched a series of economic and social reforms in 1991 under Prime Minister Narasimha Rao. Under the new policies the government allowed private and foreign broadcasters to engage in limited operations in India. This process has been pursued consistently by all subsequent federal administrations. Foreign channels like CNN, STAR TV and private domestic channels such as Zee TV, ETV, Sun TV and
Asianet started satellite broadcasts. Starting with 41 sets in 1962 and one channel, by 1995, television in India had covered more than 70 million homes giving a viewing population of more than 400 million individuals through more than 100 channels.

Effect of OTT on Indian Television Industry

Online video streaming, also known as Over-the-top (OTT) services like Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Hotstar, ZEE5 and others, gained popularity in India after 2015. It created a threat to the Indian television industry. TV viewers has to follow the schedule of TV channels to watch their favorite programs. On the other hand, OTT service providers allows its users to watch their favorite content whenever they want. Moreover, penetration of Internet access in India helps OTT users to access the content from anywhere. This convenience of OTT has helped it to gain popularity among the young internet users in India. The usage of OTT was significantly increased during the national lockdown period (From March 2020 onwards) after the COVID-19 outbreak in India. More people began to watch OTT platforms for foreign content and their spent on TV was significantly reduced.

Broadcast media

There are at least five basic types of television in India: broadcast or "over-the-air" television, unencrypted satellite or "free-to-air", Direct-to-Home (DTH), cable television, IPTV and OTT.

Over-the-air and free-to-air TV is free with no monthly payments while Cable, DTH, and IPTV requires a subscription that varies depending on how many channels a subscriber chooses to pay for and how much the provider is charging for the packages. Channels are usually sold in groups or a la carte. All television service providers are required by law to provide a la carte selection of channels.

India is the second largest pay-tv market in the world in terms of subscribers after China and has more than doubled from 32% in 2001 to 66% in 2018.

Broadcast television

In India, the broadcast of free-to-air television is governed through state-owned Prasar Bharati Corporation, with the Doordarshan group of channels being the only broadcaster. As such, cable television is the primary source of TV programming in India. Private channels were started in about 1992.

Cable television

As per the TAM Annual Universe Update – 2015, India had over 167 million households (out of 234 million) with televisions, of which over 161 million have access to Cable TV or Satellite TV, including 84 million households which are DTH subscribers. Digital TV households have grown by 32% since 2013 due to migration from terrestrial and analog broadcasts. TV owning households have been growing at between 8–10%. Digital TV penetration is at 64% as of September 2014. India now has over 850 TV channels (2018) covering all the main languages spoken in the nation and whereby 197 million households own televisions.

The growth in digital broadcast has been due to the introduction of a multi-phase digitization policy by the Government of India. An ordinance was introduced by the Govt. of India regarding the mandatory digitization of the Cable Services. According to this amendment made in the section 9 of the Cable Television Networks (Regulation) Amendment Ordinance, 1995, the I&B ministry is in the process of making Digital Addressable System mandatory. As per the policy, viewers would be able to access digital services only through a set top box (STB).

Starting in December 1991, Star TV Network introduced five major television channels into the Indian broadcasting space that had so far been monopolized by the Indian government-owned Doordarshan: MTV, STAR Plus, Star Movies, BBC
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