Lost time and opportunity

This has to be really a case of misplaced identity crisis. Doordarshan. Do you remember watching it in the good old days when life was simpler with no decision making when it came to channels and programs – it was DD, take it or leave it.

Then came the others and life changed forver, with viewers spoilt for choice. Today, one does not even know for sure as to how many channels India truly has and the choice is so wide that merely deciding on what to watch has become a chore. Yet, it is not as though people have returned to DD. It’s a channel which most in cities do not watch and probably watched only by those who do not have cable TV.

Thus in this scenario, DD planning to allow people to watch its channels on the smartphone, without using either the internet or telecom broadband seems like a big joke. Agreed that it allowed competition to trample and beat it down to extinction and it is now looking at leaping ahead of all, hoping to catch up on the lost time and viewers.

Well, good idea but the moot question is – when people do not watch DD on TV itself, who would be interested to watch it on the smartphone? It hopes to catch the younger generation which spends so much time on their phones. That’s true but expecting and targeting them as the audience to watch DD on their phone is misplaced information or rather foolhardy. Lost time and opportunity can never be got back ……