Executive Dossier

Prasar Bharati’s monopolistic-era mind-set has to change: CEO Jawhar Sircar

Published

10 years ago

June 21, 2016

Jawhar Sircar, the 60-something chief executive of India’s public broadcaster Prasar Bharati, is bubbling with ideas and energy —- in sharp contrast to the organisation’s headquarters that gives a casual visitor a sense of life in slo-mo.

Prasar Bharati is the parent organisation of 57-year-old Doordarshan and 86-year-old All India Radio, the country’s public broadcasters who claim to cover almost the whole of this vast country stretching from Kashmir to Kanyakumari — and a little beyond to a few islands in the Indian Ocean.

Critics say age and a semi-lethargic attitude of the over 40,000-strong workforce impede both the organisations from being nimble footed in an age when technology has vastly changed the speed and mode of delivery of video and voice. Add to these government controls (via annual funding from taxpayers’ money to bridge the gap between revenues and expenditure) and Prasar Bharati continues to function as a moribund government organisation despite an autonomous status.

The chief executive of Prasar Bharati, who joined the organisation in 2012 after serving in the government for over 30 years, is not shy to admit that some fundamental problems stop it from being `India’s BBC’ or `India’s NHK’. He goes a step ahead to say (with tongue firmly in cheek) that functionaries of Prasar Bharati “are living in a time warp” — in a world of their own that could be a zillion years behind reality.

Even if you give full marks to the tech and social media-savvy Sircar for being candid, it cannot be wished away that both DD and AIR will continue to be an extension of the government’s PR division unless there’s a radical change in the thought process of India’s ruling class and policy-makers.

Sitting in his office, in New Delhi’s PTI Building, amidst files and colleagues, many of them keep trooping in and out for advise and suggestions, the multi-tasking Sircar, is completely at ease conversing with Indiantelevision.com’s consulting editors B B Nagpal and Anjan Mitra on a wide range of subjects. Edited excerpts from the interview:

Q: What could be the five guiding principles that you have etched out for Prasar Bharati’s possible reform?

JS: Having joined the organisation in 2012, I don’t have much time left now, but I am still trying to (a) bring about transparency (b) prioritise our objectives as a public broadcaster (c) get the organisation adjusted to competition (d) get the organisation to look at non-terrestrial and satellite-based transmission and (e) strengthen the FreeDish platform.

Q: Do you think all of these could be achieved; especially as majority of Prasar Bharati workforce seems to still live in a pre-Independence era?

JS: Sadly, the majority mindset is a big hurdle in moving forward in an era where technology is changing fast and competition (from private sector) reacts faster to changing situations and ground realities. Many of my colleagues still believe they are in a monopoly era when DD and AIR were the only source of entertainment and news for Indians. Such a mentality needs to change if we are to be in the race as a viable and relevant organisation.

Moreover, I and the board of Prasar Bharati, have been functioning with inadequate human resources at senior levels too. There had been no Member-Finance for a long time and regular Director-Generals for DD and AIR are yet to be put in place.

However, I also believe that with some change in mindset and additional revenue, which can accrue from infrastructure sharing with private sector players and better use of under-utilised existing infrastructure, Prasar Bharati can be more relevant as an organisation and to the Indian public.

Q: Can you give an example of monopolistic era mindset that, probably, tries to be immune to technological advances?

JS: (Smiles) During the first few years of my tenure nobody here understood what OTT (over the top) stood for and how it’s relevant to our services. Another example is that of adoption of MPEG-4 broadcast technology. It had been cleared one and a half years back, but procedural delays hampered quick adoption.

Q: Now that we are talking about new technologies, what would your reaction be if digital terrestrial TV (DTT) is thrown open to private sector players by the government?

JS: Prasar Bharati approved DTT over a year back. We were told to come up with a plan but no base paper could be prepared as there was some resistance internally from certain quarters. And, Prasar Bharati is not afraid of private players’ entry into DTT… we are quite open to the idea. Rather we’d support any such move if the government some time allows private players in DTT.

Q: What can Prasar Bharati gain by supporting private players’ entry in an arena that had been a monopoly of the pubcaster?

JS: Changing with the times makes you relevant. Why should DTT be Prasar Bharati’s monopoly? By allowing others, Prasar Bharati can earn additional revenue as we can lease out our infrastructure to private players who, otherwise, would have to make huge investments in setting up infrastructure. Let a private sector (content) aggregator come forward with a business plan. DD, anyway, is investing on DTT infrastructure.

Q: You earlier talked of bringing about transparency in Prasar Bharati. In what way do you feel the proposed e-auction system will be an improvement on the systems adopted until now to obtain content?

JS: The proposed e-auction would be a completely transparent method and a step towards overall transparency in the organisation to acquire content for DD. It will also put the onus on the successful bidder to ensure good content.

Q: But, before the current SFC system of self-financed commissioned programmes, DD had a system of sponsored programmes whereby good programmes where especially produced for DD. How is e-auction going to be an improvement over the sponsorship scheme?

JS: That kind of system had led to monopolization… with a few big names dominating the entire prime time of the public broadcaster. Ultimately, the same big names from Bollywood made serials for Doordarshan and left little scope for fresh talent.

In fact, I had initially faced internal resistance to the plan for e-auction of prime time slots too, and it took serious convincing on my part for the idea to sink in with others. DD has already announced that this is being done on an experimental basis and may be extended to its other channels if the scheme is accepted.

I am confident that audience loyalty, national sentiment, and the vast reach of Doordarshan would help to make the scheme a success.

Q: You referred to giving a push to FreeDish, which is the country’s only free-to-air KU-band service. What are the plans and what would be the present subscriber base of FreeDish?

JS: As the antennas are available in the market (at a nominal one-time price ranging between Rs 3,000-4,000) and no monthly subscription is paid, it is difficult to know how many television households have FreeDish. This audit will become easier when we complete the process of encryption of FreeDish while keeping it free to air.

Exact figures may be difficult in our case as even the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India admits there is a gap between the number of active and registered subscribers of private DTH operators. But it is understood (from feedback from market and sale of antennas) that there are around 15 million households hooked to FreeDish.

In recent times, FreeDish has got some very good response from private TV channels…many of them, including the big names, want to hop onto FreeDish’s platform for wider reach of their products. We have plans to increase the number of FTA television channels on the platform so a consumer gets more choice.

Q: There were plans to upgrade FreeDish to MPEG 4 to increase its capacity to carry more signals. But there has been no report on the progress in this regard.

JS: It is not possible to implement MPEG 4 and the new Indian Conditional Access System (iCAS) together at the same time. But the commitment of FreeDish is to reach the rural areas and also cover all the areas not reached so far by television.

Q: After initial protests by Prasar Bharati, Broadcast Audience Research Council had begun to give rural data separately. Are you satisfied with the audience measurement system?

JS: We at Prasar Bharati have had some issues with BARC, which we would prefer to raise directly with the organisation. But our understanding is that DD covers a large part of India via its terrestrial and satellite services.

Q: Why is it that Prasar Bharati cannot function like BBC or other public service broadcasters in the world?

JS: The move to greater professionalism is eventually bound to happen, but some hurdles have to be crossed including those relating to budgets.

Public funding on the public broadcaster in India is just Rs 2,400 crore as compared to Rs 51,653 crore in Germany, Rs 39,800 crore in the United Kingdom, Rs 34,097 crore in Japan. The amount spent on Prasar Bharati was even lower than those spent on pubcasters in Canada, Australia, and Korea.

The per capita funding in India on the pubcaster is only Rs 19 as compared to UK and Germany where it is approximately Rs 6,000 to Rs 7,000. Even Malaysia has a per capita funding of Rs 350.

Q: What are the constraints on acquiring good content for Doordarshan?

JS: The expenditure on content in India is a mere six per cent as compared to 75 per cent by NHK in Japan and 71 per cent by the BBC.
The Indian Government gives 62 per cent as compared to 100 per cent in Russia, 98.2 per cent in Malaysia, 97 per cent in Germany, and 83 per cent in the UK. So, this should answer your question.

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Executive Dossier

Game on, fame on as Good Game hunts India’s first global gaming star

Published

3 weeks ago

January 27, 2026

indiantelevision.com Team

MUMBAI: Game faces on, pressure high India’s gaming ambitions are levelling up. Good Game, billed as the world’s first as-live global gaming reality show, has officially launched in India with a bold mission: to crown the country’s first Global Gaming Superstar.

Blending esports with mainstream entertainment, the show brings together competitive gaming, creativity and on-camera performance in a format that tests more than just joystick skills. Contestants will be judged on gameplay, screen presence and their ability to perform under pressure, reflecting how gaming has evolved from pastime to profession and pop culture currency.

Fronting the show are three high-profile ambassadors: actor and entrepreneur Samantha Ruth Prabhu, Indian cricket star Rishabh Pant, and gaming creator Ujjwal Chaurasia. The winner will take home Rs 1 crore ($100,000) among the largest prize pools for any Indian reality show along with the chance to represent India on a global stage.

Backed by a planned annual investment of up to Rs 100 crore, Good Game is also courting brand partners, promising a minimum reach of 500 million among India’s core youth audience. The creators position the show as a bridge between entertainment and interactive culture, offering long-format content, community engagement and commercial scale.

Auditions are now open to Indian citizens aged 18 and above, inviting amateur and professional gamers, creators and performers alike. Shortlisted candidates will be called for in-person auditions in Mumbai on 14 and 15 February, and in Delhi on 28 February and 1 March 2026.

With big money, big names and even bigger ambition, Good Game signals a shift in how India views gaming not just as play, but as performance, profession and prime-time spectacle.

Digital

SpotDraft hires new CMO and CFO to fuel global push for its AI contract platform

Published

2 months ago

December 3, 2025

indiantelevision.com Team

INDIA: SpotDraft has strengthened its senior ranks as it gears up for faster global expansion, naming Alon Waks as chief marketing officer and Amit Sharma as chief financial officer. The appointments follow the firm’s $54 million Series B round earlier this year and mark a push to scale across the Americas, EMEA and India.

The AI-powered contract-lifecycle-management platform has posted 100 per cent year-on-year growth in customer acquisition, counting Apollo.io, IPSY, Mixpanel, Oyster and Panasonic among its global clients. The firm processes more than one million contracts annually, with volumes up 173 per cent and nearly 50,000 monthly active users.

Waks, a veteran of Kustomer, Bizzabo, CreatorIQ, LivePerson and ZoomInfo, will steer global marketing and category positioning as legal teams adopt AI-driven tools. Sharma, who has led finance across scaling tech firms since 2016, will guide financial strategy, investor relations and market expansion.

Both hires aim to sharpen SpotDraft’s bid for a larger slice of the fast-growing legal-tech market, expected to exceed $63 billion by 2032. Co-founder and chief executive Shashank Bijapur said the company is focused on scaling go-to-market operations in the Americas, deepening leadership in EMEA, and accelerating AI capabilities for general counsels and legal-operations leaders.

Clients report shorter deal cycles and better alignment between legal and business teams. “What used to take weeks now happens in days,” said Abnormal Security senior legal operations manager Susan Koenig. DeepL head of legal operations André Barrow, said SpotDraft has helped reframe legal “from a cost centre to a generator of revenue”.

Executive Dossier

Outdoor Ads Get Smarter as LOC8 Shifts OOH from Visibility to Attention

Published

3 months ago

November 28, 2025

indiantelevision.com Team

MUMBAI: Out-of-home ads were once the wallflowers of marketing seen by everyone, noticed by few. But in an age where attention has become the world’s most fought-over currency, even billboards are getting a brain upgrade. Enter LOC8, OSMO’s AI-powered attention engine, quietly reshaping the old OOH playbook by measuring not just who could have looked at an ad, but who actually did. The shift is subtle but seismic: impressions are out, impact is in and data, not gut instinct, is calling the shots.

In a landscape where marketers question every rupee spent outdoors, LOC8 is turning lampposts, flyovers and traffic islands into precision-mapped attention laboratories. By crunching dwell time, visibility zones, perceptual size and real-world obstructions, the platform is dragging OOH into a future where creativity meets computer vision and where the best ideas aren’t just eye-catching, but eye-measured. From automotive facelifts to FMCG novelty and real estate trust-building, the message is clear, outdoor has stopped shouting and started listening. Indian Television Dot Com explores more about it in an Interview interview with OSMO co-founder Nipun Arora.

On how OSMO is shifting outdoor advertising from a visibility-led medium to an attention-led one through LOC8.

Traditional OOH has long been measured by visibility and impressions i.e how many people could see an ad. OSMO, through its proprietary AI platform LOC8, is shifting that narrative more towards likelihood of being noticed. Using computer vision and machine learning, LOC8 analyzes real-world video data to measure visibility zones, obstructions, dwell time and perceptual size; bringing precision to how attention is quantified outdoors. It moves the focus from mere impressions to quality of impressions, making OOH a data-verified, attention-led medium comparable to digital in accountability.

On how marketers can use LOC8’s dwell-time, visibility and perception insights to craft more effective, emotionally resonant OOH campaigns.

LOC8 helps brands understand how people truly experience outdoor media how long they look, from what distance, and under what conditions. By quantifying dwell time, visibility duration, and perceptual size; marketers can plan campaigns that align with real human viewing behavior. This empowers creative and strategy teams to design emotionally resonant storytelling where messaging, visual hierarchy and placement are optimized for how people actually notice and process OOH creatives.

About what LOC8 has revealed through campaigns like Renault Triber and Namaste India on how categories such as auto, FMCG and real estate use attention metrics to drive outcomes.

Each category uses attention data differently but all share one common goal: to convert outdoor visibility into measurable engagement.

• Automotive | Renault Triber

For the new Renault Triber facelift, bold creative met data-led planning through LOC8. By analyzing on-ground video data, LOC8 measured real audience attention across placements factoring in visibility zones, obstructions, traffic speed and perceptual size. This enabled Renault to identify corridors that delivered maximum reach, saliency and engagement, optimizing media efficiency and ROI.

• FMCG | Namaste India

In OOH, innovation is the hook and assets are the bait. But bait often hides the hook. With Loc8’s attention metrics, we ensured the bait wasn’t a hurdle, rather it became the perfect stage for innovation to deliver its full impact! The insight proved that creative novelty, when validated by attention data, drives deeper engagement and measurable brand lift.

• Real Estate

For luxury and real estate campaigns targeting HNI/UHNI audiences, attention patterns differ especially between front and rear passengers, who are often the core audience segment for premium sites. LOC8’s ability to distinguish rear vs. front visibility plays a critical role here. It helps identify sites that offer longer viewing windows and stronger perceptual dominance from the rear seat where decision-makers are most likely seated making it a key differentiator for premium and trust-led categories. Together, these insights prove that auto optimizes for impact, FMCG for recall, and real estate for trust visibility showing how attention metrics adapt to category goals while ensuring measurable outcomes.

On how attention analytics will shape the future of brand storytelling and media planning as OOH becomes more digitised and data-driven.

As outdoor digitizes, attention analytics will inform not just where to advertise but how stories are told in public spaces. This evolution transforms OOH from a static broadcast channel into a dynamic attention ecosystem, where creativity is optimized through evidence-based insight.

On how LOC8’s data-led framework helps marketers quantify OOH impact and make outdoor a more accountable, ROI-driven medium.

LOC8 bridges the gap between intuition and evidence. By quantifying metrics like visibility duration, attention opportunity index, and visual saliency rank, it allows brands to benchmark site performance and justify investment. This data-led approach brings transparency, comparability and ROI measurement to a medium historically driven by perception.

On how OSMO ensures AI and computer vision enhance creativity rather than reduce it to numbers.

OSMO believes that technology should enhance creativity, not overshadow it. LOC8’s attention models reveal what naturally draws the human eye helping creative teams refine design cues, contrast, and visual hierarchy for greater impact. By merging art and science, LOC8 empowers creativity with intelligence.

About the creative best practices and design cues LOC8 has uncovered regarding what truly captures consumer attention outdoors.

LOC8’s visual cognition analysis has surfaced clear patterns across campaigns:

• High contrast and minimal messaging outperform cluttered designs.

• Motion cues draw significantly longer dwell times.

• The first two seconds are critical, creatives must establish focus instantly.

• Contextual alignment between the creative and its environment increases attention by over 30%.

These learnings offer a scientific foundation for creative effectiveness helping brands design OOH that’s visually magnetic and emotionally memorable.

On how attention metrics will integrate into omnichannel planning where OOH, digital and social work together for unified brand impact.

Attention can become the unifying KPI across OOH, digital and social to creates seamless storytelling continuity, where outdoor triggers digital engagement. The future of omnichannel planning lies in attention-led integration ensuring that campaigns don’t just reach audiences everywhere but truly capture and hold their focus.