AIR unveils new broadcasting house

Indiantelevision.com Team(24 August 2005 8:17 pm)
NEW DELHI: Indian pubcaster Prasar Bharati enterd the digital era byunveiling a swanky studio for All India Radio in the Asia-pacific region'sbiggest broadcasting studio set up here.The New Broadcasting House, as its being called, was inugurated byinformation and broadcasting minister Jaipal Reddy yesterday, who said thatapproximately Rs 1.97 billion would be spent on the whole digitizationprocess.The minister also took the opportunity to allay fears of the employees ofPrasar Bharati, an autonomous organisation.The employees union had recently exhorted Prime Minister Manmohan Singh torepeal the Prasar Bharati Act as it would fail to take care of theemployees' concerns in its present form due to shortage of funds.The new facility of Prasar Bharati was unveiled in the presence of I&Bministry secretary SK Arora and Prasar Bharati CEO KS Sarma.The New Broadcasting House is the first ever fully digital studio set up ofAll India Radio. Built on a plinth area of 13,895 sqmtrs, it has twoblocks -- a five storey studio block and a seven storey administrativeblock.The new set up, which will be used by AIR home services, News ServicesDivision and the External Services Division, has 26 fully automatedtransmission studios. All recording, editing and playback equipment,including mixing consoles and master routers, are in digital mode.The newsroom is paperless, equipped with the state-of-the-art facilities.Besides 26 transmission studios, the nw facility also houses six dubbingrooms, five control booths, two radio conferencing rooms and one captiveearth station.The digital audio work stations have a provision for 24 hour scheduledprogramme back up to take care of accidental network failure.A newsroom automation software system developed by the Dalet company willenable a central server to receive the feed from wire agencies like UNI,PTI, PTI Bhasha and UNI Varta, faxes and voice dispatches from AIR'scountry-wide correspondent network and sound-bites from TV and make itavailable to editors on individual workstations.And in the studios, instead of reading from paper sheets pinned tocardboards, AIR's newsreaders will now read off the computer monitors, wherethe story will keep getting updated till the last minute electronically.All India Radio has seven channels broadcasting from Delhi. The NewsServices Division puts out daily, 112 national bulletins in 17 Indianlanguages and 65 external services bulletins in 27 languages.It's not that AIR only is getting upgraded. A new wing for Doordarshan toowas unveiled yesterday by the I&B minister.Doordarshan Tower B is an eleven storey octagonal structure, flowering outfrom the sixth floor upwards. It is enveloped by a five storied structurehousing studios and ancillary technical areas. The 18,958 sqmtrs technicalarea is centrally air conditioned and houses four studios of varying sizes.The largest studio is 600 square metres with height equivalent to a fourstorey building. Besides various technical facilities for recording andtransmission, the building also provides for rehearsal rooms, committeerooms, projection room, large screening area and a film preview theatre.The total project cost of Doordarshan Bhawan Tower B is Rs 820 million. TheTower C, an eight storey structure with a 600 persons capacity amphitheatre,will be built in future.