Prasar Bharati gear up to broadcast Commonwealth Games 2010

After Prasar Bharati's floating of global tenders for coverage of the 2010 Commonwealth Games fuelled protests among its employees, board of directors of the public broadcaster is assessing if Doordarshan can be upgraded to provide high definition broadcast of the event. Prasar Bharati's Board of Directors has asked its CEO B S Lalli to find out if the technology at Doordarshan can be revamped at a cost of Rs 463 crore, allocated to it by the Government for broadcasting and coverage of the Games.
Sources in Prasar Bharati said the mini PSU Broadcast Engineers Corporation India Limited (BECIL) has already been engaged to determine the cost of upgrading Doordarshan's transmission facility to high definition. However, at present there are only a few TV sets in the country, which are high definition (HD) enabled. Moreover, such sets are manufactured abroad, a senior DD official said. "The cost of these sets are in the range of Rs 40,000 to Rs 50,000 each and they are not currently available in the country," the official said.
As of now, 10 foreign broadcasting companies, including Rupert Murdoch's Fox Television, have shown preliminary interest for the coverage. However, the floating of tender had fuelled a flurry of objections from board members and employees, who alleged that the CEO is working in collusion with private television firms.