Few would have dreamt that they were sowing the seeds of a revolution when they went to an industrial exhibition in Delhi, peeped into a camera and rejoiced when they saw themselves in the television sets. On September 15, 1959, the then President of India, Babu Rajendra Prasad signalled the first transmission of Doordarshan at Vigyan Bhavan. The transmission was relayed twice in week, 20 minutes a day in and around Delhi and could be watched in the “Community television sets” installed by the Government. The rest, as they say, is history.
In 1976, NASA leased out one of its satellites to India for promotion of rural education and thus a programme called SITE (Satellite Instructional Television Experiment) was initiated.
In Karnataka, these programmes were telecast for three hours in the evenings to 400 villages of Raichur, Gulbarga and Bijapur. In 1977 Gulbarga got the first terrestrial transmitter of Karnataka.
Doordarshan hit the airwaves of Bangalore on November 1, 1981, which helped showcase art, culture, literature, communication etc. The base production center for the Kendra was inaugurated on November 11, 1983, which facilitated the introduction of news in Kannada. Feature films were also telecast on the same day. Sponsored serials started going on air from November 1, 1985.
A regional language satellite channel was launched on August 15, 1990, which became a 24-hour channel on January 1, 2000 called “Chandana”. Chandana means sandalwood, which is synonymous with Karnataka.
Chandana Utsava in different district head quarter towns like Dharwad, Mysore, Shivamogga and Mangalore and became an instant hit. Some of the prestigious programmes of the Kendra have been “Smarananjali - A Tribute in honour of the martyrs” and “Madhura Madhuravi Manjula Gana”.