PUNE, Nov 5: The Consortium for Educational Communication (CEC) director Prof. M.M. Chaudhary has expressed his reservations about the effectiveness of the Vidyavahini - an exclusive education channel proposed by Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee.Speaking to the mediapersons on Wednesday, Prof. Chaudhary said that since Vidyavahini will be received through satellite signals and not through conventional terrestrial signals, the penetration of the audience will be reduced to a great extent.``There are limited households in the country who can afford television and still less are those who avail of facilities like cable channels. In such a scenario the goal of meeting the educational requirements of the common masses will not be adequately met,'' he remarked.Prof. Chaudhary suggested a revamp in the telecast priorities of the existing three main channels of Doordarshan, he said that channel one be made totally educational and informative whereas the metro channel be assigned the slot of entertainment. ``Similarly DD-3 can be assigned the task of dealing solely with sports,'' he opined.Prof. Chaudhary also expressed his discontent with the time slots provided to the educational programmes under the countrywide classroom project on Doordarshan. ``Most of the programmes are aired at odd times like very early in the morning thus limiting the audience,'' he lamented.Speaking about the CEC activities he said that the Consortium was actively considering the proposal of producing regional language programmes for countrywide education programme.The project, he said, was likely to take off next year. Under this project, regional programmes will be produced at the select centres of Educational Media Research Centres and Audio Visual Research Centres spread across the country. The centres identified for the project include Pune, Madurai, Chennai, Hyderabad, Roorkee, Sagar and Jamshedpur, said Prof. Chaudhary.
