DD Sports again has been extremely disappointing with the quality of its broadcast. Once again a mega sporting event, once again the craze and the hype surrounding it and once again the broadcaster is not up to the task. The government either needs to tighten up its owned channels or needs to let others bid for the rights.

I came back from the hospital and sat down to watch the Olympics broadcast on DD Sports. The 250 km cycling road race was in its final stages and the lead was continually changing hands. The race had 19 km to go and just then the broadcaster decided to switch on to a game of “WOMEN’S FOOTBALL” which was just into the first half. The presenter said that there were still 20 minutes left for the road race to finish and they will get back to it. After showing football for a few minutes the channel started showing an interview of the IOA chairman Mr. Suresh Kalmadi. With all due respect to Mr. Kalmadi, that interview could easily have been recorded and shown after 10 minutes. And, so the road race finish was not televised live.

After the interview, the presenter said that they were going to take a break but suddenly the channel started showing the recording of the road race with 11 km remaining. At that time three cyclists were ahead of the others. But when just one kilometer remained and six bikers were clubbed at the head, the channel switched to the studio to show the medals tally. It was only on a news channel where I got to know that all the six leading bikers finished at 6 hrs 23 minutes and 49 seconds and had to be separated by milliseconds and it frustrated me even more.

Then the channel started showing Rhythmic Gymnastics. The action was quite breath taking and the teams were into the final of the six rounds. A Brazilian gymnast had just scored an outstanding 15.95 points and the action was its peak and just then the channel switched to a women’s football match between USA and Japan.

Even in the inauguration ceremony yesterday at some points the commentators were busier reading the quotations and phrases that they had brought prepared rather than describing the unfolding events. The commentators struggled to identify many star players even those like Kobe Bryant and Andy Murray. They just read out the names of the flag bearers from the information booklet they were given.

I think many others have at some point in time felt the frustration of having to watch and miss sporting action due to poor broadcasting on Doordarshan. We all have criticized it at our homes and discussed it with friends and family. The only thing is that nobody has bothered to comment about it in media.

The government feels that it is necessary to give the rights to its own channel so that such events could go to a larger audience free of cost. But some consideration needs to go into the quality as well and the system needs to be revamped. The most appreciable solution would be to raise the quality of these channels. The other solution for the mean time could be to simultaneously allow another sports channel to broadcast such events.

What do you people think? Please let everybody know, what other solutions are feasible?

 

http://drmohit.sulekha.com/blog/post/2008/08/does-dd-piss-you-off-too-what-s-the-solution.htm