It was in 2017 that Prasar Bharati officially announced its plan to launch the DD Kids TV channel, with cartoons based on Indian culture, mythology, and ethos and had mentioned about procuring and locating local content for the proposed channel.
Then Doordarshan Director General Supriya Sahu said that a launch like this would push more families to also opt for Free Dish and increase its subscriber base, to a great extent.
Years went by and in 2022, Mayank Agrawal, Prasar Bharati’s then CEO spoke of making its debut in the next one year.
Cut to August 2024, efforts seem to be ‘still in progress’.
The launch of the channel is delayed further with the pubcaster’s plan to soon launch its own OTT platform.
Sources close to the development told Storyboard18 that Prasar Bharati is in fact yet to even begin content sourcing for DD Kids at a scale, despite the years of delay.
The main reason for the holdup is the pubcaster’s focus on securing partnerships for its upcoming OTT platform’s kids’ content, taking priority over the TV channel’s development.
“It is delayed because they are contemplating a lot of other things and have started to work on the OTT channel where the kids’ content is going to be there, slowly the migration is happening towards the digital terrestrial. So probably soon after that, we will see the emergence of DD Kids,” said one of the sources.
“For a kids channel they need to commission or procure content and I doubt it has been procuring any programming for a long time,” adds Partho Dasgupta, Managing Partner, Thoth Advisors and ex-CEO, BARC India.
Ashish S. Kulkarni, Chairman of FICCI for Animation, Visual Effects, Gaming and Comics Forum and Founder, Punnaryug Artvision confirmed that the content acquisition and the validation of kids’ content has already started for the upcoming OTT platform. “A large number of animators and creators have been already approached for content to be uploaded there.”
The direct-to-home platform of Doordarshan, DD Free Dish’s expansive reach brings a heterogeneous mix in audience profile combining both urban and rural areas, making it a must-have platform for broadcasters targeting national advertisers with a wide target audience. But has no channel for kids. As it reaches around 50 million homes at present, there is more of a reason for having a channel for children.
Additionally, a channel like DD Kids gives a push and encouragement for Indian stories and culture to travel globally, shares Kulkarni.
“In the absence of a public broadcaster in this space, producers like us have been confined to selling content for kids only to the pay TV channels, which reduces the potential to half. At the same time, most of the IP ownership gets transferred to the pay TV and the producers are not able to retain the rights of the shows with them,” he adds.
During a recent meeting with the Minister of I&B, Railways, and MeitY, Ashwini Vaishnaw, Kulkarni proposed a content reservation policy for kids’ content- 80% of such content should be produced domestically in India.
The industry has long advocated for the establishment of DD Kids, a dedicated channel that would significantly enhance the ecosystem for children’s content.
Prasar Bharati runs a YouTube channel for children but it is limited to the digital medium.
Launch of DD Kids as a full-fledged channel with an appropriate budget allocation to be sustained for the next 10 years, has also been proposed to Vaishnaw.
This will, according to Kulkarni, give way to program acquisition, greenlighting of new shows, co-productions, and marketing.
In a previous interview with Storyboard18 Gaurav Dwivedi, CEO, Prasar Bharti had said, “We are in the process of getting additional transponders so that the range can be further increased and there is more bandwidth available and hopefully from the next year we should be able to offer even a greater variety of content to the viewers by allowing a larger number of channels to come.”
Although, there has been no date or timeline assigned to the launch of DD Kids. Experts say pubcaster’s OTT would come before the TV channel release is even finalised.