Did you know that you needed a licence to own a Television in India ? !
This post is about the symbol of middle class aspiration, that is the ‘Television’. As I mentioned in my previous post on the same theme, the growth of the Indian middle class, over the past two decades, can be attributed to the opening up of markets, leading to more disposable incomes in the families. This growth was manifested in form of aspirational items such as televisions.
The journey of television in the Indian middle class can be broken down into three major points :
- Growth in numbers of ‘Households having Television’
- Advancement in TV technology
- The explosion of content on TV
- Growth in Number of Households having Television:
With the growing prosperity of the middle class, the urge to be entertained also grew. Before television, the only means of entertainment was the Radio. I went looking for some ‘open data’ regarding the growing number of households which had a television. I found some data on BARC-India (ref-p4) and Census-India (ref-p31) sites.
We can see that the television ownership has been constantly increasing. The introduction of television in India goes way back than the years shown in the above data. National telecast was introduced in 1982 (source: wiki). Apparently my parents, a middle class couple, were part of this aspirational wave, and bought their first television in 1982. How do I know that ? In two ways. Firstly, because I had once asked my mother, and she had told me an anecdote about their television purchase (the said anecdote is mentioned later in this post). Secondly, and very interestingly, I found a documentation about it, while cleaning our storeroom, after my parent passed away.
So, did you know that you needed a licence to own a Television in India ? Well apparently you did, in 1982 !
The ‘Radio/Television Licence – Domestic/Concessional’ was issued by the ‘Indian Post and Telegraph‘ department (it was a department established during the British rule). The licence was issued by the post office, under the ‘Indian Telegraph Act, 1885‘. Telegraphy and telephony made their appearance in India, as part of the postal service before becoming separate departments . I still remember that in my childhood, we used to send telegrams at the post office (you could only write few words of message to send, on the application form, and as a receipt you used to get a small stub of the same form), but I never knew that television licences were also issued by the post offices once upon a time. I am guessing, like the telegram technology became obsolete, so did the practice of giving out television licences. Nowadays one needs licence only for satellite phones/ ham radios/ maritime radio/ aircraft radio (permissions given by ‘Department of Telecommunication’)
Fun Fact: In Myanmar, also a British Ex-colony, the post and telegraph department is still combined, which was likely called ‘Myanmar Post and Telegraph (MPT)’ before, and is now called ‘Myanmar Post and Telecommunication‘ ) . Myanmar recently replaced their ‘1885 Myanmar Telegraph Act’ with their new telecommunications law, but India’s ‘Indian Telegraph Act, 1885’, made by the British in the same year, is still in use (with add-ons and amendments).
- Advancement in TV technology:
The initial televisions were ‘black and white’. In 1982 color television technology was introduced in India (source: wiki), but it was way out of reach for the middle class.
In 1982, the first television which my parents bought was a ‘Weston’ brand television (I was surprised to see that company Weston is still around). It was a TV with a ‘cathode ray tube (CRT)’. The box of the device was made of plywood and sunmica, it had wooden legs, and in the front it had two-pane sideways shutter also made of thin plywood and sunmica laminate strips. All the control knobs and switches were on a panel, besides the front of the CRT. For catching the signal, we had a ‘yagi antenna‘, made of aluminum, with two-parallel-element wire running from the antenna to the back of the television. Because yagi was a directional antenna used to catch analog signals, I still remember adjusting the direction of the antenna manually. Ours was a small standalone one bedroom home, with no stairs to go to the terrace. Every time the television lost signal ( due to wind, or due to monkeys [yes, we have stray monkeys too, like stray dogs and stray cows ] ), I had to jump on a wall and then on to the terrace . what followed was the absurd sequence of me rotating the antenna a few degrees and shouting ‘Aaya kya ?’ (is it back?), and somebody standing near the television saying ‘Abhi Nahi‘ (not yet). After about 15 minutes of this awesome conversation of ‘Aaya Kya-Abhi Nahi‘, finally I would hear the beautiful ‘Aa Gaya‘ (its back). After that, it was also important for me to somehow secure the antenna at that position. So I would use wires, threads, sticks, to do some ‘jugaad‘ (MacGyver-ing) to make it stay. Then I had to jump down from the terrace on to the wall, which was just one brick thick, to come on the ground (I once fell from that wall, and injured myself. I still have that scar on my eyebrow)
Then came the color televisions, with the CRT kept inside a poly carbonate plastic box. I think our family’s upgrade to color television came around the early ’90s. The new television was manufactured by ‘BPL‘ brand. It had provision to get signal both via a Yagi antenna, and via coaxial cable supplying analog signals from a satellite dish antenna. We bought the color television, but continued to use the Yagi antenna for many years. Although the occasional re-adjusting of the Yagi was a chore, there was one great feature in this television. It had a remote control. Small things like changing the volume, or muting the volume, were also fun initially. Although we had just two channels coming via Yagi, still there was pleasure in changing channels from far. After some years, when there was a vendor providing a cable connection with private satellite channels, eventually we got that connection via a coaxial cable. Thus, finally our dear Yagi antenna was retired.
For a long time the cable connection was analog, which fed directly into the television, via a coaxial cable. Some years back, that has also changed. Now the cable connection is carrying a digital signal, and now we need a ‘set-top-box’ between the coaxial cable and the television. Also now there is an option to choose the vendor. Either you can choose your locality’s vendor who provides connection to multiple homes, or you can choose a satellite vendor who provides individual content direct-to-home connection via a small satellite dish antenna installed outside your home.
The latest upgrade in technology was the emergence of flat screen televisions. Our trusty BPL television kept us company for many years, but was getting old. Its volume controls were acting up, and the picture quality was slowly deteriorating. We tried to get it repaired, but to no avail. Eventually, the BPL television was disposed, marking the end of CRT era for us. The new flat screen television was sleek, light, and had great picture quality.
- Explosion of content on TV:
Initially there was just one television channel. It was a state run black-and-white channel called ‘Doordarshan‘. Here is the anecdote, about my parents’ purchase of their first black-and-white television. When I was a teenager, one day I asked my mother why and when did they buy the television. She told be that they bought the television in 1982. They bought it so that they could watch the 1982 football world cup (my memory could be wrong about the event’s name, because apparently in 1982 there were two big sporting events, the 1982 FIFA world cup, and the 1982 Asian Games held in Delhi). But, the more surprising thing about this, for me, was the fact they actually bought a television for watching sports. All through my teens, I never saw my parents interested in sports, The only sports they watched was the occasional cricket match (if India was playing). Although, now that I think of it, the probable reason for it, was that my mother was an athlete during her youth (school/college)(state level player), and fresh after marriage maybe she still had the sporting spirit in her(’82). Or, a more likely reason, was that the content (a huge sporting event) was so enticing, that they fell for the content’s allure, and bought the television.
Doordarshan was a national free-to-air terrestrial analog channel which could be watched with a Yagi antenna. Later on, in addition to Doordarshan, another free-to-air channel was introduced, called ‘Doordarshan Metro’. The first channel national channel was frequently called DD1, and the metro channel was called DD2. Together within DD1 and DD2, there are so many memories of my child hood. The mythological serials (Ramayana and Mahabharata) had a fan following of all the family members. The silliest things are the ones I remember, like the episodes where, during a war scene, almost an entire episode was exhausted by showing differently designed arrows flying towards each other and crashing in the middle of the screen. Like, the fire arrow from the right will be countered by shower arrow from the left. Each arrow pair would take at least two minutes of screen time, during which the camera kept panning from one arrow to another, with dramatic music playing in the background. Then there were series like ‘Vikram Vetal‘ where Vikram the king had to carry Vetal the ghost on his back, while Vetal told him stories. I didn’t watch this series too much, as I was usually scared of it. Song programs like ‘Chitrahaar‘ and ‘Rangoli‘ were my father’s favorite. Then there were famous crime series like ‘Byomkesh Bakshi‘. As a child my favorite used to be the Sunday morning cartoon series cartoon series called ‘He-Man and the Masters of the Universe’.
In the early ’90s private cable channels started their operations. The content options on televisions started increasing. In came channels like Star TV, MTV, and Zee TV. For the initial television years, the telecast was limited to only day time. All channels ( DD1, DD2, Start, MTV, Zee, etc.) were only telecasting programs 6-7 in morning to 7-8 in the night. That quickly changed, and the telecast hours kept expanding till many channels were 24×7. In the late ’90s, when cable channels were growing, at my home we still had DD1 and DD2 coming via free-to-air Yagi antenna. The private channel cable connection was a paid service, and my parents were not convinced about the benefits of a paid connection for extra channels. In the mean time, some of my friends who had the cable connection told me that the cable vendor showed ‘grown up’ channels around midnight. For my teenage, hormone ridden brain, this was a major revelation. I still remember the foolish nights, when I pretended to sleep, woke up around midnight, tiptoed out of the home, climbed up our guava tree, and using a wire and a pin, tried to get some signal out of the vendor’s coaxial cable passing in front of my home. All this for those blurry, static filled pictures of semi clad ladies. Oh, the teenage years.
As the number of channels kept increasing, and more shows and programs started coming, finally my parents decided to get a private cable connection. I think the deciding factor for them were the soap operas, which were gaining popularity. Channels with more content, targeted to specific audience groups(age, language, region, culture, etc), were cropping up very fast. Then there were channels dedicated to news, which kept repeating the same news round the clock. Slowly the phrase ‘expanding telecast time to fill content’ changed to ‘expanding content to fill telecast time’. Content is still being produced in bucketfuls, and the population is still lapping it up all. After all, everybody aspires to be entertained.
The old rival of television, the radio is pretty much dead now. A new rival has come up, to challenge television’s rule. The new rival, the smart phone, is a formidable rival. Their big fight is ongoing. It seems like the smart phone will win. But with the growing middle class, with the growing number of television sets across the country’s population, and with the growing television content available, the television is not gonna die easily…