Television in Karnataka

Karnataka > Television in Karnataka

Gulbarga was the first centre in Karnataka to have a relay centre. It was inaugurated on 3-9-1977 and at the outset, in a radius of 40 km, 240 villages and towns of Raichur and Bijapur districts and Gulbarga were benefited by community viewing. The community viewing T.V. Sets were maintained and serviced by the Doordarshan Kendra, Gulbarga. Bangalore City was provided with an interim TV relay centre on 1 -1 -1981 .Initially, Bombay and Madras TV Programmes were relayed for a limited period on the selected days of the week. But programmes could be locally produced and telecast only from December 1983. In 1984, TV transmitters were commissioned at Mangalore, Davangere, Bijapur, Bellary, Gadag, Raichur, Dharwad, Mysore, Belgaum and Hospet. The full-fledged production centre of the Bangalore Doordarshan was started in 1988.

The Doordarshan Kendra, through regional language satellite service started relaying Kannada programmes from 1-3-1990 was gradually regularised from 1-11-1990. On 12-1-1992, Shimoga had a 10 KW transmitter. As on 18-5­1993, there were 27 TV transmitters working in the State. All of them are connected to Bangalore Doordarshan Kendra. Apart from Kannada Programmes, the Kendra is also telecasting programmes in Tamil, Telugu, Marathi, Urdu, Kodava, Konkani and other Indian languages. About 72% of the population and an area of 86% in the State, was covered by the Doordarshan from 93­94. The Kendra started its DD9 transmission from 15-8-1994. Kannada Movie club was initiated in August 1995 and the Karnataka Regional Services DDK tract was inaugurated from December 1995.

By 1998, there were altogether 46 T.V. transmitters, comprised of 4 (HPT), 39 (LPT) and 1 (OT) respectively. During 1999-2000, besides upgrading the Hassan centre from LPT to HPT (10KW), new LPTs have been commissioned at Hiriyur, Hosadurga and Dandeli along with the VLPT commissioned at Badami in Bagalkot district The exclusively part-time Kannada Channel, DD9 was made a 24 hours Kannada Channel (Chandana) of 12 hours of repetition, meant mainly for Kannada literary programme, socio-economic and cultural activities with 30% of commercial viable programmes. The Doordarshan Kendra, Bangalore had earned a sum of Rs. 19,61,67100 in 1998-99 from both sponsored programmes and commercial sources, but its revenue has fallen down to Rs. 12,05,87,975 for the year ending 1999-2000. So far it has succeeded in covering 75.9% of the total area and 69.8% of the total population in the State which is well below the national average of 88.5% and 75.5% respectively. It is estimated that nearly 2.8 crores of the total state population were regular T.V. viewers within the State. There is a proposal not only to upgrade Mysore and Mangalore D.D. Centres from LPT to HPT, but also to install LPTs at Mudhol and Sindhanur. As on Dec 2000, 4 HPTs, 46 LPTs and 3 VLPTs were operating in the state and providing DD1, DD2 and Chandana Channel services to the people of Karnataka.

Besides Doordarshan satellite channels, privately initiated satellite channels like Udaya, Ushe, Kaveri, Udaya News, Suprabhata and Eenadu; Tamil Channels like Sun, Raj and Vijaya; Telugu channels like Eenadu, Gemini T.V.; Hindi channels like Zee, Home and Sony; Malayalam channels like Eenadu and Asianet; Other Channels like Star, ESPN, BBC, Discovery, National Geographic, FTV, MTV, Channel V etc., are providing varieties of entertainment through Cable Operators. At present, local cable operators in the towns and cities are associating together to form a single city cable network, through which the programmes are telecasted within the respective city jurisdictions.