The Meteoric Rise of Television in India: From Educational Tool to Entertainment Powerhouse

On September 15, 1959, in a modest studio in Delhi, a flickering black-and-white signal marked the beginning of one of the most remarkable transformations in the history of mass communication. Few could have predicted that this small, government-backed experiment – meant primarily to educate farmers and schoolchildren – would eventually evolve into one of the world’s largest and most vibrant television markets. The story of television in India is not just about technology; it is about a young nation’s evolving relationship with information, identity, and entertainment.

A hesitant beginning: television as an educational experiment (1959) 🔗

India’s first television broadcast was launched on September 15, 1959, from the All India Radio (AIR) studio in Delhi. It was not a commercial venture – it was a pilot project conceived as a tool for social education. UNESCO and the Ford Foundation provided the critical early support, supplying equipment and funding, while the Dutch firm Philips contributed a low-power transmitter. The broadcasts were simple: two one-hour programmes per week, covering topics like community health, road safety, and civic responsibilities. Television sets were expensive and inaccessible to most Indians, so the government installed community television sets in “tele-clubs” around Delhi – gathering spaces where people could watch together.

The medium was firmly grounded in Jawaharlal Nehru’s vision of technology as a public good. Broadcasts reached only a 40-kilometre radius, and the content was aimed at schools and community groups rather than individual households. This approach set Indian television apart from its commercially-driven Western counterparts from the very start.

From tele-clubs to school television 🔗

By 1961, the Ford Foundation helped fund a more organised educational initiative called the Delhi School Project, which extended educational telecasts to around 250 schools in the Delhi region. This was a significant step – television was now being formally integrated into the education system. School Television (STV) was launched in October 1961 as a systematic support to formal classroom instruction, and teachers found it a valuable tool for presenting complex content. A few years later, Krishi Darshan – a programme for farmers – began airing on Wednesdays and Fridays, serving 80 villages around Delhi with community sets. The medium was slowly, deliberately expanding its reach.

Doordarshan grows: the 1965-1976 expansion 🔗

In 1965, Doordarshan began daily transmissions, including a five-minute news bulletin – the first of its kind. Television was still confined to a small audience, but its institutional footprint was growing. Doordarshan’s coverage expanded from Delhi to Bombay (now Mumbai) and Amritsar in 1972, and then to seven more cities by 1975, including Lucknow, Calcutta, Madras, and Srinagar. By 1976, the network had grown to eight television stations serving around 45 million people. A landmark administrative decision that same year formally separated Doordarshan from All India Radio, giving it an independent identity and a dedicated Director-General. This move gave the broadcaster the institutional autonomy it needed to evolve from a radio annexure into a full-fledged national television organisation.

SITE: the world’s largest television experiment (1975-76) 🔗

The most ambitious chapter of India’s early television history was the Satellite Instructional Television Experiment (SITE) – a joint project between NASA and the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), launched on August 1, 1975. The project used NASA’s ATS-6 satellite to beam educational programming directly to over 2,400 villages across 20 districts in six Indian states: Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, and Rajasthan. It ran for exactly one year, until July 31, 1976. The science writer Arthur C. Clarke described it as “the greatest communications experiment in history.”

What SITE broadcast – and to whom 🔗

SITE transmitted four hours of programming daily, split into two categories. Educational Television (ETV) ran for 1.5 hours each morning for school children. Instructional Television (ITV) aired for 2.5 hours each evening for adult audiences. The programmes focused on health and hygiene, family planning, agricultural practices, national integration, and adult literacy, and were produced in regional languages including Hindi, Oriya, Telugu, and Kannada. TV sets were installed in community centres, schools, and panchayat buildings, making viewing a collective public experience.

Impact and legacy of SITE 🔗

The experiment was a genuine social phenomenon. Thousands of villagers gathered around TV sets every evening, with viewership peaking at 200 to 600 people per set in the early months. Initial studies found real gains in agricultural knowledge, health awareness, and school enrolment rates. However, SITE also had limitations. Agricultural advice was often more useful to wealthier farmers who could afford new seeds and implements, and structural poverty meant that television information alone could not drive transformational change. Still, SITE’s broader legacy was enormous. It proved that satellite technology could reach India’s most remote populations and, crucially, it spurred the Indian government to invest in building its own indigenous satellite system – a decision that would reshape Indian broadcasting permanently. SITE also won UNESCO’s first Rural Communication Prize, recognising its international significance.

1982: the year that changed everything 🔗

If SITE planted the seeds, the year 1982 made Indian television bloom. Two developments that year permanently altered the medium’s trajectory.

The birth of colour television 🔗

Colour television in India was introduced with the live telecast of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s Independence Day speech on August 15, 1982, followed by the colour broadcast of the 9th Asian Games held in New Delhi. The decision was strategic: India wanted to present itself as a modern, progressive nation to a global audience during its first major international sporting event. The government invested heavily in broadcast infrastructure, and colour television sets were imported in bulk ahead of the Games. The vivid, immersive experience of watching sports in colour drove a surge in television set sales across urban India, bringing the medium into far more middle-class homes than ever before.

A national network is born 🔗

The Asian Games coverage also triggered the launch of the National Programme, which linked all of Doordarshan’s regional stations via satellite for a unified evening broadcast. For the first time, viewers in Chennai and viewers in Delhi could watch the same programme simultaneously. India’s first communication satellite, INSAT-1A, was launched in 1982, providing Doordarshan with satellite transponders for national networking. This was the true birth of a shared national viewing experience – television had crossed the boundary from an urban educational tool to a genuine mass medium.

The golden era: Doordarshan in the 1980s 🔗

With a national network in place and colour broadcasting driving audience growth, the 1980s became Doordarshan’s golden age. Programmes like Hum Log (1984), Buniyaad (1986-87), Ramayan (1987-88), and Mahabharat (1988-89) became cultural events in their own right. Entire streets fell silent during broadcasts. Families and entire communities would gather around a single set. Mahabharat, in particular, reportedly brought India to a standstill each Sunday morning. These mythological and social dramas created a shared cultural vocabulary that cut across regions, languages, and classes.

Doordarshan’s first soap opera, Hum Log, which followed the lives of a middle-class Indian family, also pioneered entertainment-education – blending social messaging about gender equality and family planning with compelling storytelling. The 1984 launch of the University Grants Commission’s Countrywide Classroom initiative brought higher education content to Doordarshan, reinforcing television’s dual role as both entertainer and educator. Yet for all its reach and cultural power, Doordarshan remained a state monopoly – its programming shaped by government priorities, primarily in Hindi, and largely reflective of North Indian perspectives.

The private revolution: satellite channels and liberalisation (1991 onwards) 🔗

Doordarshan’s monopoly came to an end not with a single policy decision, but with a geopolitical event on the other side of the world. CNN’s live coverage of the Gulf War in 1991 gave millions of Indians their first encounter with real-time international satellite news – and many wanted more. India’s economic liberalisation under Prime Minister Narasimha Rao in 1991 opened the country’s skies to private and foreign broadcasters. In 1992, Zee TV became India’s first private Hindi satellite channel. Star TV, Sony Entertainment Television, and Sun TV soon followed.

The cable television industry expanded rapidly alongside these new channels. By the mid-1990s, cable had penetrated Indian cities and many smaller towns, giving viewers access to 24-hour news channels like NDTV, international channels like BBC and Discovery, and diverse entertainment formats that Doordarshan had never offered. As of 2025, India has over 900 active television channels, making it the second-largest television market in the world by viewership. The journey from a single experimental studio in 1959 to this sprawling, multilingual, multi-platform landscape is one of the most dramatic transformations in global broadcasting history.

From public service to entertainment powerhouse 🔗

Television in India entered as a public servant – designed to educate farmers, connect remote villages, and support national development goals. What it became was something far more complex: a commercial, cultural, and political force that mirrors India’s own contradictions and aspirations. The trajectory from UNESCO-funded tele-clubs in 1959 to the satellite-driven entertainment boom of the 1990s was neither smooth nor inevitable. It was the result of deliberate policy choices, technological gambles, and the extraordinary hunger of a diverse population to see itself on screen.

The foundational principles established in those early decades – the idea that television should serve not just urban elites but rural communities, not just entertainment but education – continue to resonate in debates about public media, digital access, and the role of broadcasting in national development.

What do you think? Given that India’s television began as a tool for rural development and education, how much of that original mission do you think modern Indian broadcasters – public or private – still fulfil? And with OTT platforms now fragmenting audiences further, is the idea of a shared national viewing experience becoming a thing of the past?

References

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3. https://storyvibe.in/the-emergence-of-television-in-india-pioneering-steps/
4. https://www.caluniv.ac.in/global-mdia-journal/Winter%20Issue%20December%202011%20Commentaries/C-1%20Sen%20Shitak.pdf
5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_Instructional_Television_Experiment
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10. https://yourstory.com/2023/04/day-color-tv-india-1982
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