From AIR To Doordarshan, How India Got Hooked On TV

Indian Television Started As An Educational Aid, But A Course Correction In The 70s Made It Entertaining As Well. A Few Good Shows Spurred Demand For TV Sets, And There Was No Looking Back After That

- Abhilash Gaur

Before cable TV caught on in the 1990s, city roofs had turned into a forest of aluminium fronds. Each house in every building had its own ‘tree’ on the roof. You needed them to receive Doordarshan (DD) signals, but those old antennas were directional. A strong wind or even the burden of perched pigeons could disorient them, leaving you staring at an eruption of white and grey dots, or colours, if you had a colour TV. You ran upstairs, leaving someone in the room as a guide.

“Now?”

“No.”

“Now?”

“No.”

“Now?”

“A little more… That’s it. Stop, stop, stop.”

The whole building knew you had set your antenna right. You could go back to your Sunday evening movie, or Wimbledon final, or Rajani, or whatever else you had been watching. But there was nothing you could do if a big leader died. During days of national mourning, DD shut shop and went home, or drowned you in shastriya sangeet.

Not that DD was exciting otherwise. Children nodded off in the middle of the evening news. Grown-ups stayed up in the hope of catching an episode of Buniyaad, or Khandaan, or Fauji. It was not unusual for DD to repeat episodes, but viewers watched them anyway out of habit.

Children had only Sunday mornings to look forward to (Johnny Soko and his Flying Robot was a rare evening show). Mickey Mouse, Spider-Man, He-Man, Knight Rider and a few others walked the 80s’ generation to maturity. But Ramayan, Mahabharat, Chanakya, Bharat Ek Khoj and others had started encroaching on their time. Children twitched impatiently as Ramayan’s arrows took longer than intercontinental missiles to collide. When cable came, they happily jumped ship to sing, “I want my MTV.”