DD National - History

History

The channel began broadcast on an experimental basis on September 15, 1959 from a makeshift studio at Akashvani Bhavan in New Delhi as part of All India Radio. It started with 20 television receivers in and around Delhi and transmitted one hour educational and developmental programs twice a week. Regular daily transmission started in 1965. In 1976, the Indian government constituted "Doordarshan", the public television broadcaster, as a separate department under the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting.

In 1982, all of Doordarshan's regional stations were networked using INSAT 1A and a national feed called National Programme was introduced. Later that year, Delhi played host to Asian Games which were covered by the channel. To increase the channel's reach, the government launched a program to set up low and high power transmitters that would pick-up the satellite distributed signals and re-transmit them to surrounding areas. By 1983, television signals were available to 28% of the Indian population. Fueled by the success of the channel's commercialization and increased revenue from advertising, the channel's reach and popularity continued to grow and in 1990, the channel reached more than 90% of the Indian population.