DD has decided not to telecast those commercials on its network which are high on claims and thin on reasons. The advertisement should make sense to the people living in remote areas also, and they should be closer to reality.

Gill has also promised that sexist-racist biased commercial will be banned on Doordarshan. A circular has also been issued to all advertising agencies advising them that all advertisements must be done in a spirit of healthy competition. The circular says that the commercials should present a balanced version to the viewers and help them make the right choice.

The circular also advises advertisers to back their claim with facts which are scientifically proven.

Many marketing agencies feel that such a decision will only result in advertisers shifting from DD to other channels and ultimately revenue loss for Doordarshan. But the Prasar Bharti Board is not worried. They are determined to stand by the chairman Nikhil Chakravarty who recently announced “We should not go for advertisements which are totally alien to village people.”

Newsreaders on the chopping block

Doordarshan’s decision to terminate the contract and services of many ‘D’ grade newsreaders has lead in a panic wave. DD has decided that only 20 newsreaders will be retained. 14 will read news while six will be used for voice-overs.

They've also decided that from now, news (both English and Hindi) will be read by only one newsreader.

JV Raman, Sanjiv Upadhyay, Avinash Kaur Sarin, Shobhana Jagdish, Ved Prakash and Sarla Maheshwari will continue to read the news in Hindi while Shammi Narang, Shubhendu Amitabh and Gajala Amin will lend their voice for news segments.

For the English news, Neethi Ravindran, Rini Khanna, Tejendra Singh, Sukanya Balkrishnan, Meenu and Sangitha Bedi are being retained. Nalini Kohli, Kaveri Mukherjee and Usha will lend their voice for news segments.

Wanted ’sensitive’ filmmakers

Prasar Bharti CEO, SS Gill, will soon meet up with some well-known film producers and directors. In fact he's planning to visit Mumbai soon because he wants to cajole “sensitive” filmmakers to start making films for DD.

Gill is keen that these producers and directors should come up with films like Sadgati, Damul and Janam for Doordarshan. Gill also wants to visit the north-east states to meet the producers and directors from that area and short-list some of them for prestigious DD projects..

Gill shrugs at Thawani’s nudge

Gill is not disturbed about the fact that Harish Thawani of Nimbus Communications is planning to file a special leave petition (SLP) challenging DD’s decision to take their programme Superhit Muqabala off the air.

Last week when Harish Thawani met Gill (for five minutes) and complained about the decision, Gill reportedly told him that he could not intervene as the decision to scrap Superhit Muqabala has been taken before the Board’s constitution. Sources in DD say that Gill advised Thawani to clear his dues first and then discuss the issue with him.

Doordarshan officials say that Thawani has to settle dues amounting to Rs 6 crore. But Thawani, sources in Mandi House say, informed Gill that he had cleared all his dues and what DD officials were demanding was nothing but an ‘arithmetic error’.

Sources confirm that Gill is not interested in discussing this issue anymore with Thawani.

Meanwhile, DD has decided to scrap Farz, another daily serial of Nimbus Communication. Sources say that Farz is being replaced by another daily soap, Deewar.

Amitabh Parashar