New Delhi: Digital channels of state broadcaster Prasar Bharati across Doordarshan and Akashvani have registered more than 100% growth in 2020, clocking over a billion digital views and over six billion digital watch minutes, the government said in a statement on Sunday.
During the year, NewsOnAir App added more than 2.5 million users with the platform registering over 300 million views. Live radio streaming, with over 200 streams, emerged as the most popular feature.
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Along with DD National and DD News, the top 10 digital channels of Prasar Bharati include Marathi news channel DD Sahyadri, Kannada programmer DD Chandana, Bangla news channel DD Bangla, and Telugu programmer DD Saptagiri.
While DD Sports and Akashvani Sports have created a steady digital following with live commentary, Prasar Bharati Archives and DD Kisan have been steady digital performers featuring in top 10, the statement added.
Underscoring the substantial digital audience for news from the region, the north east service of All India Radio News is also in the top 10, and has crossed the 100,000 subscribers online.
Pakistan accounted for the second highest digital audience for DD and AIR content during the year after viewers from within India, followed by the United States.
Popular digital videos during 2020 include Prime Minster Narendra Modi's interactions with school students, the Republic Day parade and a rare 1970s video of mathematician Shakuntala Devi from DD National archives.
A Prasar Bharati YouTube channel dedicated to Sanskrit language content was launched in 2020, wherein all radio and TV content being produced in Sanskrit across the DD-AIR nationwide network is uploaded, for easy access to viewers.
The Mann Ki Baat YouTube channel and Twitter handle have seen rapid growth in 2020, the government said with the latter having more than 67,000 followers and the former including regional language versions of different episodes featuring the PM’s address. Around 1,500 radio plays in different Indian languages are available across the DD-AIR network which are now being digitised and uploaded on its YouTube channels. Several hours of educational content and teleclasses are now available on the broadcaster’s YouTube channels in different Indian languages.
Rare archival content of great historical value, available only with DD-AIR, is also being digitsed and uploaded on Prasar Bharati Archives YouTube channel. For the same, a team is working to dig out such musical, cultural, political content from thousands of tapes recorded over many decades in various stations of DD and AIR across the country to make it available in public domain with easy access to all for academic and research purposes, the government said.
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