Doordarshan in Britain

Indians living in Britain will have the ‘luxury’ of watching Doordarshan as the National Broadcaster launched DD India and DD News in UK this week.

Doordarshan has tied up with London-based Rayat TV for broadcast of its free-to-air channels on the Sky platform. Although the market is already crowded with players like Zee, Star, Sony, NDTV, numerous British Asian channels like MATV and Raj TV, DD is optimistic and hopes to make inroads with its content.

The Rayat group is owned by NRI Nirmal Singh Rayat. Rayat CEO Khalil Mahmood hopes to use DD’s experiance in the field of educational, sports, public service programming and children’s programmes, as well as DD’s exclusive news rights on government broadcasts to break into the market.

In the UK, the company seeks to use DD’s terrestrial reach in India and its dominant market share as their USP and looks forward to use this to reach out the to advertisers and the Indian diaspora back in Britain.