India 2018

426 India 2018
Refurbishing Unit
In order to refurbish the vintage music recordings in archives refurbishing
unit was installed some years back with the assistance of United Nations
Development Programme. Hundreds of hours of recordings of music and
voice of Mahatma Gandhi, Pandit Nehru, etc., were refurbished here. As of
now this unit takes care of enhancing the audio quality of the recording
being released by AIR and Doordarshan archives.
External Services Division
The cardinal role played by international/external broadcasting as an
instrument of foreign policy and public diplomacy needs no elaboration.
Due to its colonial link with England, broadcasting came almost
simultaneously in England and India. Similarly, shortly after BBC started its
first foreign language broadcast in Arabic in 1938 on All India Radio entered
the domain of external broadcast on October 1, 1939 purely as a tool for
propaganda for the Allies during the World War II with a service in Pushto
language to counter the German Radio Blitzkrieg in the region and
supplement the efforts by the BBC in this part of the world. At the dawn
of Independence, ESD had to don a new avatar as the voice of an emerging
nation, an old civilization, a tool for diplomacy and also effective propaganda
machinery at the time of different crises. Since then the External Services
Division of AIR has been a vital link between India and rest of the World,
specially with those countries where the interest of India are intertwined
because of Indian population staying in those countries.
External Services Division of All India Radio ranks high among the
external radio networks of the world both in its reach and range covering
about 100 countries in 27 languages. The AIR, through its external broadcasts,
aims to keep the overseas listeners in touch with the ethos of India. The
languages in which AIR reaches its foreign audience are English, French,
Russian, Swahili, Arabic, Persian, Pushto, Dari, Baluchi, Sinhalese, Nepali,
Tibetan, Chinese, Thai, Burmese, and Bhasha Indonesia. The services in
Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and Gujarati are directed at overseas
Indians, while those in Urdu, Punjabi, Sindhi, Saraiki, Kannada and Bengali
are meant for listeners in the Indian sub-continent.
National Academy of Broadcasting and Multimeda
National Academy of Broadcasting and Multimedia (NABM) (Programme)
hitherto known as Staff Training Institute (Programme) is the apex training
institute of Prasar Bharati. It is responsible for training of in-service
Programme and Administrative personnel working at various stations of
AIR and Doordarshan.
Audience Research Unit
With the changing mass communication scenario, Audience Research has
occupied the centre stage. World over, almost all the big media organizations