Minister for Information and Broadcasting and Textiles Smriti Zubin Irani on Monday said Doordarshan should leverage the reach created by DD Free Dish to create quality content and improve the revenue generation through advertisements and ease the burden on taxpayers.
Speaking at the inauguration of the 24th International Conference and Exhibition on Terrestrial and Satellite Broadcasting with the theme ‘Non Linear Broadcasting Technologies & Business Models’ – (Broadcast Engineers Society) BES EXPO 2018, she said India is set to have 530 million smartphone users by the end of this year, second only to China and more than 40% of content consumption happens online.
The minister said the total advertising spend is expected to grow from 9.6% last year to 12.5% this year and asked BES to conduct an outreach programme with students and faculty of broadcast engineering institutes.
She said the strength of the broadcasting sector in India should be seen not by the number of channels available but by the quality of content provided by it. She requested BES to train all the broadcast engineering staff of Prasar Bharati.
Irani and other dignitaries felicitated the winners of the awards constituted by BES in various categories such as broadcasting, engineering, training and innovation.