Very few of the 200-plus private news channels gave credit to Doordarshan for the live footage of the historic Bhumi Pujan ceremony at Ayodhya on August 5, says Shashi Shekhar Vempati, CEO, Prasar Bharati. This can impact the revenues but that is not what the public telecaster is aiming at.

The ceremony from 10.45 am to 2 pm, presided over by prime minister Narendra Modi, was a big draw among audiences and an estimated 160 million people viewed it on their screens. They all sourced the footage from Doordarshan but did not bother to mention so.

“When I asked my team to check how many channels gave credit to Doordarshan, there were only a handful and the rest had cleverly masked the logo with L-Bands and advertisements,” Vempati told Kailashnath Adhikari, MD, Governance Now, on Thursday in the latest instalment of the Visionary Talks series – a live webinar – held by the public policy platform.

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Vempati said that as a public broadcaster, “at DD, we consider it is our responsibility and share our content without expectations.” As a result, monetisation happens only to that degree and not beyond that.

He was speaking on various revamp initiatives taken by Prasar Bharati and how DD is planning to ride on the tremendous success of the decades-old epic serials, Ramayana and Mahabharata, during the lockdown and after.

You can see the previous episodes of the Visionary Talks series here: http://www.governancenow.com/visionary-talks-series