The Hindu : Sport : DD captures the moment, then disappoints

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Tuesday, Aug 12, 2008
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DD captures the moment, then disappoints

K. P. Mohan

We see more of the anchors discussing history instead of live action

NEW DELHI: Doordarshan beamed the memorable moment of Abhinav Bindra shooting India’s first ever individual Olympic gold in Beijing. And then there was disappointment.

After going back to the studios, DD did bring the medals ceremony for the spectators to hear the National anthem for the first time in an Olympics after 1980, but there was no follow-up. DD has a big contingent in Beijing.

History was made on Monday. It was not the time for DD, the sole rights holder for live Olympics coverage in India, to go back to the previous day’s highlights, even if it was a scheduled programme, but to rise to the occasion and bring more on Bindra from Beijing.

As news channels, without exception, went on for hours to describe India’s greatest moment in Olympic history, including Bindra’s post-event media briefing, as was expected of them, DD stuck to its previous day’s “highlights package” and later its routine coverage that included even synchronised diving.

When India has won its first ever individual gold, you don’t want to watch a “highlights” programme that has been shown the previous night as well as partially covered in the day’s opener at 5.00 a.m.

DD also could not show Bindra and Gagan Narang fighting for a place in the final, but then this has been the pattern on the two previous days as well, the explanation being lack of “feed” despite an eight multi-channel beaming from Beijing (one DD anchor put it at 16 different channels).

Poor coverage

As it is, the DD coverage has been rather disappointing since much of the time we see the anchors discussing history of each and every sport rather than live action from Beijing. A DD official said that they had been advised to show “all sports”, when queried about the near-complete black-out of swimming finals every morning.

On Sunday, just one out of four swimming finals, was shown live. On Monday, there was none, though a recording was shown much later as “live”.

Preliminary rounds of team games are being shown as though they are more important than Michael Phelps gunning for a record haul of gold medals. And there have been world records aplenty as well in the pool. We are forced to watch them on private news channels.

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