August 9, 2003

THIS is a question India is grappling with, as she studies the possibility of launching a science channel on television.

“We have to launch a channel that is going to be a success. The Channel has to find and shape its own viewership and create a vigorous popular response.

Crucial to the success of its management and programme production activity is the building of a framework that includes all the distinct groups of stake-holders,” said the promoters of the network aiming to see if it’s possible to work out this plan.

A meet in this south Indian city of Bangalore, sometimes portrayed as India’s Silicon Valley and home to a lot of software entrepreneurism, was held in early July 2003 by a not-for-profit organization called Comet Media Foundation, the Centre for Environment Education, and the Communications Unit of the Government of India’s Department of Space.

India sees its space programme as an important element of its natural infrastructure — for communications, broadcasting, meteorology, disaster management, and resource monitoring. Incidentally, the Government of India plans to launch sometime in 2005, EDUSAT, a satellite meant exclusively for educational transmission. Part of the transmission capacity of the satellite will be reserved for science education programming.

“This is being called the Science Channel for the present, though it may eventually be not just one, but several channels, catering to different audiences, age-wise and language-wise,” say the promoters of the concept.

If things work out as planned, the co-ordination and management of the Science Channel will be the responsibility of the Development and Educational Communication Unit (DECU) of Department of Space, Indian Space Research Organization.

The ISRO space programme was launched in 1963, with a sodium vapour payload. ISRO’s maiden venture in developing a satellite launch vehicle was a failure in 1979 due to malfunction of the first stage control system. Undeterred, the SLV-3 attempt in 1983 brought success. Subsequent years have seen failures and successes, with the latter growing more recently.

DECU has been engaged in the activity of using TV as a medium of communication for development and education for nearly three decades. Also involved in this initiative is Vigyan Prasar, an organization concerned with science communication, a part of the Department of Science and Technology.

In the run-up to other plan, a series of workshops are being held in different regions of India. The first two were held at Mumbai and Kolkata. Then come Bangalore, Shillong and Ahmedabad.

For now, the plan is to involve “potential stake-holders” in the channel on the content and production side and in the distribution and reception of the programming. Such stake-holders include media makers, science communicators, education-related non-profit organizations, academic institutions, media training centres, other civil-society collectives and individuals.

“The intention is to form these links now, so that the talents and resources of these varied workers could be drawn on eventually for the channel,” say organisers.

It’s hoped that with the interactive technologies available today, there will “possibly be greater opportunities for both audiences and media makers to contribute to the evolution and working of the channel than has been possible earlier”.

It is believed that rather than be centrally placed at one office, the organization supporting this channel will have to be widely dispersed, a virtual organization, with nodes located all over India.

For now, the focus is on the development of a wide-ranging working alliance of those working to “take science to the people in various ways”. Members of this coalition are to work to develop briefs, enter into production, facilitate pre-testing at the field level, provide feedback on programmes, and find financial and facilitative resources for programmes.

Later, the second phase will be the creation of a body of work, the future bank for programming of the channel, based on this alliance. Needless to say, the channel would face tough competition from other channels, and would have to take note of viewing-habits and expectations of viewers.

Programs will be pre-tested with the involvement of partners working in various sections of society and their feedback will be used to develop further programming.

In a third phase, actual on-air transmission and the operation of a responsive mechanism of audience feedback will hopefully come in. This all has the end aim: to run a pioneering channel committed to enhancing the public understanding of science, engineering and technology issues.

“Essentially, the focus is on humanising science and making it more accessible through television,” argue the organisers. How? By trying to connect science to the everyday life of people avoid imparting scientific knowledge from a superior position, but to understand people’s knowledge requirements and give it to them in an interesting way.

India’s TV network has changed vastly over the years. It has also spread to millions of households, and till recently getting access to a satellite channel cost a little more than your newspaper bill. Till not so long back, people switched on their evening broadcasts on TV, and kept it going till they went to bed, viewing whatever came on the single channel.

Today, with the airwaves getting commercialized and privatised, dozens of channels compete for short audience attention spans. ‘Kaun Banega Crorepati’, a quiz game promising a crore-rupee prize, became fads. But very few successes sustain themselves.

“(Our) presupposition is that the channel cannot have a producer-content expert-social scientist generated agenda. Unlike the supply-driven attempts at educational TV (in India) in the past, this effort has to depend on the momentum dictated by demand. Our approach to programming, and the very character of the channel has to be rooted in studies of the fluid, dynamic, ever-changing audience context, and appropriate mechanisms to fine-tune the programming with constant audience feedback must be in place from the start,” say plans which indicate the thinking.

What would make cable operators, media and educational authorities want to have this channel on?

For even a “modest start-up” offering two languages, Hindi and English, with some percentage of shared programmes, such a channel would need “some thousands of hours of programming”. (It is today calculated at 4,400 hours at a count of three repeats, 18 hours of transmission, two languages.)

Besides science, the channel hopes to include including health, environment, sustainable development and related issues. Too ambitious a task? Is this a dream that can be realized? Time will tell.

The writer is a freelance journalist based in Goa, India

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