TV news limited in range : Channels yet to acquire national character

The Doordashan News channel in its present avatar completes one year this month. As a 24-hour national news channel, it stands out for its overall performance. But news bulletins of neither of the news channels, including DD News, distinguish themselves as representative of India. An analysis of seven news channels for their contents brings out this fact. The extent of coverage of rural India, even in the case of DD News bulletins, is limited. This has been much below 2 per cent of the items in a week. In fact, about half of the items of news bulletins, including DD News, are from Delhi and Mumbai. DD News lags in terms of fineness in the production quality and in the quality of transmission at the receiving end in the case of Cable TV households.