The Prasar Bharati Corporation is not too happy implementing the Prime Minister’s dream of showing farmers their own Kisan TV and have told the Agriculture Ministry that the project is not viable.The channel, launched on January 21, is transmitting local programmes from five places for an hour each in contrast to the original plan which envisioned 1,000 channels blooming over three years. By that yardstick, 300 channels should be in place transmitting programmes for farmers this year.Instead, corporation officials are saying the money being offered by the Agriculture Ministry is not enough. There is shortage of manpower too. As of now, the Ministry is giving Rs 40,000 for two half-hour programmes which includes the cost of production and subsequent broadcast. ‘‘They are paying for two programmes a week, which are telecast for six days a week. That is a total of 30 one-hour telecasts, for which DD gets Rs 40,000, a figure arrived at by DD itself,’’ they said.The corporation has instead put a figure of Rs 2 lakh per half-hour, which is roughly the money charged from other ministries like Health and Rural Development. ‘‘We need more money and manpower to implement Vajpayee’s dream and have communicated to the Agriculture Ministry that the project is not viable in present form,’’ officials said.Officials from the Ministry said the project was being implemented with the concurrence of Prasar Bharati. ‘‘They agreed to it,’’ they said.Even over a period of time, DD estimates, Kisan TV will not take off. DD operates its national channels on 829 Low Power Transmitters (LPTs) with a range of 15 km, 166 High Power Transmitters (HPTs) with a range of 70 km and 371 Very Low Power Transmitters with five km range — literally 1,000 channels ought to have bloomed in a phased manner.Officials said they were guided by the assumption that transmitters could be converted into stand-alone TV stations to broadcast local content as they don’t have production facilities.
