WHEN THE DISH KNOCKED DOWN THE ANTENNA How television digitization is impacting low income viewers and public broadcasting Podhamundi Village, Kalahandi, Odisha A FIVE STATE STUDY By THE MEDIA FOUNDATION NEW DELHI 1 WHY THIS STUDY A technology switch in television affects different income groups differently. In India the digitization of TV signals is putting an end to the free-to-air telecast regime. This study,the first of its kind,goes to working class TV viewers, people at the bottom of the income pyramid, to discover how digitization is impacting them. Has it increased or reduced their access to television? What are people’s entertainment and information needs? Has digitization served those needs? And for the most deprived sections of the population, are there barriers to the use of television itself? The Media Foundation presents this study primarily as a data report, conveying snapshots from the ground in five states, in an attempt to answer the questions cited above. It goes to districts like Kalahandi, Kandhamal, Dantewada, Bastar, Narmada, Adilabad and Krishna, among others, to gauge the changes brought by digitisation. It also looks at how digitization has impacted access to public broadcasting, and examines the relevance of the programming on the public broadcaster for the lives of the rural and urban poor. 2 Part 1 TELEVISION DIGITIZATION AT THE BOTTOM OF THE PYRAMID How the poor in rural and urban India are being impacted by television digitization Part 2 THE CONTOURS OF PUBLIC BROADCASTING DEMAND AND CONTENT Unmet information needs of the working class population and a breakdown of what the public broadcaster telecasts. Annexure What are the TV shows watched in low income households? REPORT AUTHORS Sevanti Ninan Aloke Thakore PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR 3 Sevanti Ninan PROJECT OFFICERS Manu Moudgil Monazir Alam PROJECT CONSULTANTS D K Bose Aloke Thakore CONSULTANTS IN THE STATES ANDHRA PRADESHKinnera Murthy, Prof. Mitashree Mitra CHHATTISGARHProf. Mitashree Mitra DELHIRajkumar Jha GUJARATAloke Thakore ODISHABirendra Das, Prof. Jagannath Dash FILM: When the Dish Knocked Down the Antenna Nupur Basu, Nirmal Chander Dandriyal 4 PARTNER ORGANISATIONS CHHATTISGARHMayaram Surjan Foundation DELHISaarthak.org, Centre for Advocacy and Research GUJARATVox Populi, Kutch Mahila Vikas Sangathan, Vishwanidam PARTNER UNIVERSITIES Department of Communication Central University of Hyderabad Department of Journalism Kushabhau Thakre Patrakarita Avam JansancharVishwavidyalaya, Raipur School of Studies in Anthropology Pt Ravishankar Shukla University, Raipur Indian Institute of Mass Communication, Dhenkanal Department of Anthropology Utkal University, Bhubaneshwar RESEARCH ASSISTANCE Delhi Meenal Thakur Hasnain Rizvi Abhishek K Choudhury RESEARCHERS FOR HOUSEHOLD SURVEYS Chhattisgarh Dikendra Khute Swati Verma Ravishankar Paikra 5 Amit Kumar Village Survey by Nitesh Srivastava Andhra Pradesh P. Vasanthi K. Srinivasu V. Venkatalakshmi L. Giri Odisha Nibedita Pani Khirod Kumar Turk, Dhananajaya Behera Bhagyashree Parida Gujarat Harish Vasava Vimal Chaudhari FOR DELHI DIGITIZATION STUDY Rajat Iyer, Sudeshna Haldar Pragya Varma, Adesh Sah atSaarthak.org FOR CONTENT MAPPING ANDHRA PRADESH SN School of Communications, University of Hyderabad Supervisor Prof. Usha Raman students: Swarna Rakesh Usha Kiran Tolety P Ashish Kumar Allam Sharanya Suresh Rachamalla Rajesh Garikimukku Abhishek Devara 6 ODISHA Indian Institute of Mass Communications, Dhenkanal Academic Associates: Bhagaban Sahu Sucharita Sahoo Students: Anwesha Ambaly Binayak Mishra Srinibas Rout Shreekanta Sahoo Arundhati Mallik Subhashree Mahapatra Ranjan Kumar Mohapatra Soumyashree Mahapatra Sumanta Sundaray Pallavi Hota CHHATTISGARH Kushabhau Thakre Patrakarita Avam Jansanchar Vishwavidyalaya, Raipur Nitesh Srivastava Mani Bhasker Utkarsh Suryavanshi Ruchi Verma Preety George GUJARAT Vox Populi CONTENT ANALYSIS OF DD SERIALS Anushi Agarwal, Devi Leena Bose and Susan Koshy Grateful acknowledgement: Francis Kanoi Marketing Research for making available their rural connectivity data for this study. 7 Prasar Bharati executives at Delhi and in the state kendras. Dish TV executives for assistance in gathering research material. SUPPORTED BY FORD FOUNDATION 8 SIGNIFICANT FINDINGS On technology • Digitization is changing the way the poor access TV. Terrestrial broadcasting reception has almost disappeared in rural and urban India. New TV households in the villages now go straight to DTH. Except in Andhra Pradesh, where cable covers much of the rural population. • Yet a substantial part of Prasar Bharati’s annual budget allocations each year are absorbed by the salary and hardware costs of maintaining its terrestrial network of 1400 transmitters. • The growth of television access in rural India is riding on the digital revolution.Post digitization, driven by content demand, rural India has overtaken urban India in TV ownership. 2011 was the first year to record this change. (Chapter 1) • The majority of TV households (hhs) opt for paid DTH over Doordarshan’s Freedish because they want content choice. In not a single state do even 50 per cent of all DTH hhs opt for Doordarshan’s Freedish, DD Direct. (Chapter 1) On content driving choice of technology: • The absence of popular entertainment channels such as Colors, and channels such as Discovery and National Geographic, and private regional language channels such as OTV in Odisha, or Zee Chhattisgarh or numerous private channels in Andhra Pradesh on the DD Direct bouquet, has led to demand for the DD Freedish declining between 2006-7 and 2012-3. (Chapter 1) • Apart from entertainment which was the strongest driver for the choice of technology in accessing television, one of the surprises thrown up by this 9 research was the extent of the popularity of channels of the genre of Discovery/Animal Planet/National Geographic. They come in right after channels from the Star and Zee stables in the hierarchy of viewer preference. (Chapter 2) On barriers to television viewing Our research shows that the barriers arise from the following: • Poverty • Power failures and load shedding • Scheduling of TV programming • The perception of TV as morally corrupting • Monopolisation of the remote by children (Chapter 3) Tribal households have less access to television than non tribal households. Affordability issues, post digitisation Digitization has made cable TV less affordable for the urban poor. Households reporting monthly incomes of Rs 10,000 or less said they were cutting down on food and savings to afford TV post digitization. Post digitization the poor have lost access to informal credit that the cable operators used to give. (Chapter 4) On unmet information needs • Despite digitization, and the access to 80 plus channels that it has brought, despite the existence of a public service broadcaster, low income viewers report that they have substantial, unmet information needs which could have helped to improve their lives. (Chapter 5) 10 • Working class men and women want employment news, career guidance programmes, and skill development programmes. They want tutorials for their children to be telecast. • There is demand for much more health-related programming than is available to them now. • Digitization has affected access to local farm programming which is only accessible on terrestrial transmission. There is also a felt need for a greater quantum of farm programming.(Chapters 6 and 7) Technological barriers to information programming • Preferred local content is becoming a casualty of the delivery platform.One of the key findings of this research is that localized broadcast and local language broadcasting even when desired cannot be accessed because it is not available on the technology platform that viewers are now on. (Chapter 6) • Most TV consumers in the rural areas want variety and flexibility and hence they choose one of the DTH platforms. Doordarshan does not have its local language or localized programming on these platforms; they are only available as terrestrial signals. • Even its own DTH platform does not carry programming from its narrowcasting kendras, or in very local languages such as Kutchi in Gujarat or Halbi in Chhattisgarh. • The entire Chhattisgarh transmission of Doordarshan is not available to most people in the state who are now on cable or DTH, because it is a non satellite transmission. 11 On the public broadcaster’s content-demand mismatch • If the most opportunity deprived constitute the public broadcaster’s constituency, they are not being well served by it. • The pressure on DD to raise its own funds for programming is leading to a content demand mismatch. It devotes far more programme hours to entertainment than to those categories of programming for which there is a felt need, such as health programming, agriculture, and regional news. (Chapter 8) • But all those surveyed said all their entertainment programming needs were met by private channels. • A month long content mapping of programming offered by Doordarshan, done in 2012 as part of this research, shows that there is a clear mismatch between the content segments provided and the content for which there is expressed demand from all the discussion groups surveyed. • On all four 24-hour DD channels whose programming was mapped the single largest time segment was given to entertainment. On DD National it was as much as 51 per cent. • Farm programming is a felt need but constitutes less than eight per cent of the total programming on DD National, on DD Odiya,