DD sports channel raring to get, set & go

NEW DELHI, MARCH 6: Information and Broadcasting Minister Pramod Mahajan has found a novel way to celebrate the first anniversary of the ...

NEW DELHI, MARCH 6: Information and Broadcasting Minister Pramod Mahajan has found a novel way to celebrate the first anniversary of the BJP-led Government in power, by decreeing that DD start a sports channel on March 19.Work has begun on a war-footing basis with his Officer on Special Duty Ajay Singh holding meetings with Deputy Director-General (Sports) Rakesh Bahadur on a regular basis.

Given that DD does not have the rights to much international sports, the network will be showcasing the best of Indian sports’. A former Doordarshan sports producer Vijay Kumar has been hired as a consultant to assess over 14,000 hours of programming in DD archives (which date back to 1982) and see what can be broadcast.

The network will be operated on the PanAmSat-4 transponder which briefly carried the National Network. But don’t expect to see too many live events on it certainly not the Sharjah Cup or the cricket World Cup, because DD (through the sports consortium led by Stracon) has only terrestrial rights tothe two events. Acquiring satellite rights will cost an additional amount and no one is clear whether Mahajan has allocated any funds for the project.But Mahajan is taking personal interest in the project, even inspecting facilities at the Central Production Centre at Siri Fort in the Capital from where the network will function. The idea to launch the network is barely a month old, but the March 19 launch date is sacrosanct, because the Minister has said so.

This is not the first time that the DD has come up with a satellite channel at such a short notice.

In August 1993, the then Minister K P Singh Deo announced five new satellite networks, which fell foul of litigation and then had to be serviced entirely by DD software.

The networks comprised sports, enrichment, music, entertainment, and business, news and current affairs. While the sports and business networks were abandoned within three months, the entertainment channel went on to become DD Metro and the enrichment channel became the equallyill-fated DD3.