IT is action replay time. The honchos who ran the Mandi House show in the slothful days of single-channel monotony are back in the thick of the television wars. Only this time they have moved out of the stuffy corridors of Doordarshan’s headquarters and slipped into the ultra-professional, no-nonsense set-ups of market-driven, hard-nosed foreign broadcasters.
Old, for a change, is truly gold. So former Doordarshan director-general (DG) Shiv Sharma is consultant to the Modi-Carlton satellite TV project and is likely to take over as chairman once the channel is launched next year. Former deputy DG Chitra Narain, still high-profile and full of ideas, dubs Walt Disney’s toontown capers in Hindi for Indian television viewers. When Disney does indeed launch a channel in India, Narain is expected to be a key figure on its creative team.
Another erstwhile deputy DG, R.K. Singh, has been appointed US sports channel ESPN’s India manager. Former information and broadcasting secretaries Mahesh Prasad and Raj Bhargava as well as ex-director (engineering) C.S. Chhatwal are reportedly much sought after as freelance consultants.
The signal is clear: it pays to be 60-plus, superannuated and acquainted with the vagaries of Indian broadcasting.
Says Sharma: "When a foreign network or an industrial house decides to launch a channel, they need experienced broadcasters who understand Indian viewers, the market and pro-grammes." Starting out in the mid-’60s, when Indian TV was just an hour-long transmission in New Delhi, Sharma rose through the ranks to become DD’s helmsman in 1988.
But is experience all? Narain, a veteren TV and radio writer-producer, says the demand today is primarily for liaison men. "They need people who can get things done," she says.
"Production personnel," says Narain, "can be bought in Bombay. But it’s not easy to find retired broadcasters with contacts in the echelons of powers." Narain is not merely a "liaison person", she has set up a consultancy and production company called Image Makers and Producers.
Retired IAS officer R.K. Singh’s raison d’etre for accepting re-employment is different. "I understand the language of broadcasting, its problems, its frustrations, its thrills. Having worked in Doordarshan, I can grasp ESPN’s needs easily," says Singh who played midwife during the birth of DD’s Metro channel two years ago.
Singh quit the IAS earlier this year on being shunted out to the I&B Ministry. Says he: "Indian broadcasters help the foreign channels minimise their gestation period. Foreign channels must domesticise. With an Indian on board, they may be able to do so in one year. Otherwise it may take four."
Says ESPN’s CEO and President, Steven M. Bornstein: "We’ve entered India without surveying the market. Though we’ve taken such risks all over the world during the past 16 years, it does help to have an Indian at the helm of local affairs."
But it’s not only those with exceptional powers of persuasion that the foreign networks are looking for. Broadcaster-managers adept at evolving effective pro-gramme mixes, too, are in demand. Says Narain: "Some of us have played both production and managerial roles in Door-darshan. And that’s a rare combination." But what’s in it for Mandi House mandarins? It is the appeal of broadcasting that Singh finds irresistible. "It’s merely a question of continuing with broadcasting. I’ve sold steel, dairy products and real estate, but there’s nothing quite like broadcasting," he says.
For Sharma, the charm of being a consultant to a major TV project is considerable. "Television," he says, "is a 24-hour job, especially in a government organisation. You have to keep several balls in the air at the same time. As a consultant, however, you do not have to juggle with too many balls. Timings, too, are flexible."
The money isn’t bad either. While nobody divulges the pay packets the former DD bosses are drawing, the likes of Sharma are known to be earning about 10 times more than they did in their Mandi House days. Many others have also joined the gold rush. Kiran Karnik, a highly-rated former ISRO and Consortium of Education Communication man, is now the vice-president and chief operating officer of the US-based Discovery channel.
The going so far seems good. And this could just be the beginning. With demand far outstripping supply, life can only get better for the bold old men of Doordarshan.
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