Mass media in India
Encyclopedia
.jpg)
Printing
Printing is a process for reproducing text and image, typically with ink on paper using a printing press. It is often carried out as a large-scale industrial process, and is an essential part of publishing and transaction printing....
started in 1780, radio broadcasting initiated in 1927, and the screening of Auguste and Louis Lumière
Auguste and Louis Lumière
The Lumière brothers, Auguste Marie Louis Nicolas and Louis Jean , were among the earliest filmmakers in history...
moving pictures in Bombay initiated during the July of 1895 —is among the oldest and largest media of the world. Indian media—private media in particular—has been "Free and Independent
Independent media
Independent media refers to any form of media, such as radio, television, newspapers or the Internet, that is free of influence by government or corporate interests. The term has varied applications...
" throughout most of its history. The period of emergency (1975–1977), declared by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi
Indira Gandhi
Indira Priyadarshini Gandhara was an Indian politician who served as the third Prime Minister of India for three consecutive terms and a fourth term . She was assassinated by Sikh extremists...
, was the brief period when India's media was faced with potential government retribution.
The organisation Reporters Without Borders
Reporters Without Borders
Reporters Without Borders is a France-based international non-governmental organization that advocates freedom of the press. It was founded in 1985, by Robert Ménard, Rony Brauman and the journalist Jean-Claude Guillebaud. Jean-François Julliard has served as Secretary General since 2008...
compiles and publishes an annual ranking of countries based upon the organisation's assessment of their press freedom records
Press Freedom Index
The Press Freedom Index is an annual ranking of countries compiled and published by Reporters Without Borders based upon the organization's assessment of their press freedom records. Small countries, such as Andorra, are excluded from this report...
. In 2010 India was ranked 122nd of 178th countries, which was a setback from the preceding year.
British Raj
British Raj was the British rule in the Indian subcontinent between 1858 and 1947; The term can also refer to the period of dominion...
. Other newspapers such as The India Gazette, The Calcutta Gazette, The Madras Courier (1785), The Bombay Herald (1789) etc. soon followed. These newspapers carried news of the areas under the British rule. The Times of India
The Times of India
The Times of India is an Indian English-language daily newspaper. TOI has the largest circulation among all English-language newspaper in the world, across all formats . It is owned and managed by Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd...
was founded in 1838 as The Bombay Times and Journal of Commerce by Bennett, Coleman and Company, a colonial enterprise now owned by an Indian conglomerate. The Times Group
The Times Group
The Times Group is the largest media conglomerate in India and is headed by brothers Samir and Vineet Jain.The company has eleven publishing centres, fifteen printing centres, fifty-five sales offices, Over 7000 employees, five dailies, including two of the largest in the country with approx 4.3...
publishes The Economic Times
The Economic Times
The Economic Times is an English-language Indian daily newspaper published by the Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd.. The Economic Times was started in 1961. It is the most popular and widely read financial daily in India, read by more than 8 lakh people...
(launched in 1961), Navbharat Times
Navbharat Times
Navbharat Times aka NBT is the largest circulated as well as largest read Hindi newspaper of Delhi & Mumbai. From the stable of Bennett Coleman & Co. Ltd which also publishes other dailies like The Times of India, The Economic Times, Maharashtra Times and also magazines like Filmfare & Femina...
(Hindi language
Hindi
Standard Hindi, or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi, also known as Manak Hindi , High Hindi, Nagari Hindi, and Literary Hindi, is a standardized and sanskritized register of the Hindustani language derived from the Khariboli dialect of Delhi...
), and the Maharashtra Times
Maharashtra Times
Maharashtra Times , coloquially referred to as 'Ma Taa' from its Marathi initialism, is a Marathi newspaper based out of Mumbai, India. It is the 9th largest selling daily newspaper in the country. It is owned by Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd...
(Marathi language
Marathi language
Marathi is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by the Marathi people of western and central India. It is the official language of the state of Maharashtra. There are over 68 million fluent speakers worldwide. Marathi has the fourth largest number of native speakers in India and is the fifteenth most...
).
In the 1950s 214 daily newspapers were published in the country. Out of these, 44 were English language dailies while the rest were published in various regional languages. This number rose to 2,856 dailies in 1990 with 209 English dailies. The total number of newspapers published in the country reached 35,595 newspapers by 1993 (3,805 dailies).
The main regional newspapers of India include the Malayalam language
Malayalam language
Malayalam , is one of the four major Dravidian languages of southern India. It is one of the 22 scheduled languages of India with official language status in the state of Kerala and the union territories of Lakshadweep and Pondicherry. It is spoken by 35.9 million people...
Malayala Manorama
Malayala Manorama
Malayala Manorama is a daily news paper, in Malayalam language, published in the state of Kerala, India. It was first published as a weekly on 14 March 1890, and currently has a readership of over 16 million . The Malayalam word "manorama" roughly translates to "entertainer"...
(published from: Kerala
Kerala
or Keralam is an Indian state located on the Malabar coast of south-west India. It was created on 1 November 1956 by the States Reorganisation Act by combining various Malayalam speaking regions....
, daily circulation:
673,000) and Madhyamam Daily", (published from: Kerala
Kerala
or Keralam is an Indian state located on the Malabar coast of south-west India. It was created on 1 November 1956 by the States Reorganisation Act by combining various Malayalam speaking regions....
, with international editions from Dubai, Doha, Bahrain, Dammam and Kuwait), the Hindi-language Dainik Jagran
Dainik Jagran
Dainik Jagran is a Hindi language daily broadsheet newspaper in India. According to the IRS Q1 2010, Dainik Jagran ranks No. 1 among the dailies with a Total Readership of 54,254,000.-Overview:...
(published from: Uttar Pradesh
Uttar Pradesh
Uttar Pradesh abbreviation U.P. , is a state located in the northern part of India. With a population of over 200 million people, it is India's most populous state, as well as the world's most populous sub-national entity...
, daily circulation in 2006: 580,000), and the Anandabazar Patrika
Anandabazar Patrika
Anandabazar Patrika is an Indian Bengali language daily newspaper published in Kolkata, New Delhi and Mumbai by the ABP Group. According to the Audit Bureau of Circulations, it has a circulation of 1.28 million copies making it the largest circulation for a single-edition, regional language...
(published from: Kolkata
Kolkata
Kolkata , formerly known as Calcutta, is the capital of the Indian state of West Bengal. Located on the east bank of the Hooghly River, it was the commercial capital of East India...
, daily circulation in 2006: 435,000). The Times of India Group
The Times Group
The Times Group is the largest media conglomerate in India and is headed by brothers Samir and Vineet Jain.The company has eleven publishing centres, fifteen printing centres, fifty-five sales offices, Over 7000 employees, five dailies, including two of the largest in the country with approx 4.3...
, the Indian Express Group
The Indian Express
The Indian Express is an Indian English-language daily newspaper. It is published in Mumbai by Indian Express Group. After Ramnath Goenka's death in 1991, the group was split in 1999 among his family members into two with the southern editions taking the name The New Indian Express, while the old...
, the Hindustan Times Group
Hindustan Times
Hindustan Times is an Indian English-language daily newspaper founded in 1924 with roots in the Indian independence movement of the period ....
, and the Anandabazar Patrika Group are the main print media houses of the country.
Newspaper sale in the country increased by 11.22% in 2007. By 2007, 62 of the world's best selling newspaper dailies were published in China, Japan, and India. India consumed 99 million newspaper copies as of 2007—making it the second largest market in the world for newspapers.
Broadcasting
All India Radio
All India Radio , officially known since 1956 as Akashvani , is the radio broadcaster of India and a division of Prasar Bharati. Established in 1936, it is the sister service of Prasar Bharati's Doordarshan, the national television broadcaster. All India Radio is one of the largest radio networks...
and since 1957 it has been called Akashvani. Limited duration of television programming began in 1959, and complete broadcasting followed in 1965. The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting
Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (India)
The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting is a branch of the Government of India is the apex body for formulation and administration of the rules and regulations and laws relating to information, broadcasting, the press and films in India....
owned and maintained the audio-visual apparatus—including the television channel Doordarshan
DoorDarshan
Doordarshan is an Indian public service broadcaster, a division of Prasar Bharati. It is one of the largest broadcasting organizations in India in terms of the infrastructure of studios and transmitters. Recently, it has also started Digital Terrestrial Transmitters. On September 15, 2009,...
—in the country prior to the economic reforms of 1991. The Government of India played a significant role in using the audio-visual media for increasing mass education in India's rural swathes. Projected television screens provided engaging education in India's villages by the 1990s.
Following the economic reforms satellite television channels from around the world—including BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
, CNN
CNN
Cable News Network is a U.S. cable news channel founded in 1980 by Ted Turner. Upon its launch, CNN was the first channel to provide 24-hour television news coverage, and the first all-news television channel in the United States...
, CNBC
CNBC
CNBC is a satellite and cable television business news channel in the U.S., owned and operated by NBCUniversal. The network and its international spinoffs cover business headlines and provide live coverage of financial markets. The combined reach of CNBC and its siblings is 390 million viewers...
, PTV
Pakistan Television Corporation
The Pakistan Television Corporation is Pakistan's national television broadcaster. The first live transmission of PTV began on November 26, 1964, in Lahore...
, and other foreign television channels gained a foothold in the country. 47 million household with television sets emerged in 1993, which was also the year when Rupert Murdoch
Rupert Murdoch
Keith Rupert Murdoch, AC, KSG is an Australian-American business magnate. He is the founder and Chairman and CEO of , the world's second-largest media conglomerate....
entered the Indian market. Satellite
Satellite television
Satellite television is television programming delivered by the means of communications satellite and received by an outdoor antenna, usually a parabolic mirror generally referred to as a satellite dish, and as far as household usage is concerned, a satellite receiver either in the form of an...
and cable television soon gained a foothold. Doordarshan, in turn, initiated reforms and modernisation. With 1,400 television stations as of 2009, the country ranks 4th in the list of countries by number of television broadcast stations.
On 16 November 2006, the Government of India released the community radio policy which allowed agricultural centres, educational institutions and civil society organisations to apply for community based FM broadcasting license. Community Radio is allowed 100 Watt Effective Radiated Power (ERP) with a maximum tower height of 30 meters. The license is valid for five years and one organisation can only get one license, which is non-transferable and to be used for community development purposes.
Communications
The Indian Government acquired the EVS EM computers from the Soviet UnionSoviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
, which were used in large companies and research laboratories. Tata Consultancy Services – established in 1968 by the Tata Group
Tata Group
Tata Group is an Indian multinational conglomerate company headquartered in Mumbai, Maharashtra, India. Tata Group is one of the largest companies in India by market capitalization and revenue. It has interests in communications and information technology, engineering, materials, services, energy,...
– were the country's largest software producers during the 1960s. The 'microchip revolution' of the 1980s had convinced both Indira Gandhi
Indira Gandhi
Indira Priyadarshini Gandhara was an Indian politician who served as the third Prime Minister of India for three consecutive terms and a fourth term . She was assassinated by Sikh extremists...
and her successor Rajiv Gandhi
Rajiv Gandhi
Rajiv Ratna Gandhi was the sixth Prime Minister of India . He took office after his mother's assassination on 31 October 1984; he himself was assassinated on 21 May 1991. He became the youngest Prime Minister of India when he took office at the age of 40.Rajiv Gandhi was the elder son of Indira...
that electronics and telecommunications were vital to India's growth and development. MTNL underwent technological improvements. Between 1986–1987, the Indian government embarked upon the creation of three wide-area computer networking schemes: INDONET (intended to serve the IBM mainframes in India), NICNET (network for the National Informatics Centre), and the academic research oriented Education and Research Network (ERNET).
The Indian economy underwent economic reforms in 1991, leading to a new era of globalisation and international economic integration. Economic growth of over 6% annually was seen between 1993–2002. The economic reforms were driven in part by significant the internet usage in India. The new administration under Atal Bihari Vajpayee—which placed the development of Information Technology among its top five priorities— formed the Indian National Task Force on Information Technology and Software Development. Internet gained a foothold in India by 1996. India had a total of 100 million Internet users—comprising 8.5% of the country's population—by 2010. By 2010, 13 million people in India also had access to broadband Internet— making it the 10th largest country in the world in terms of broadband Internet users.
India had a total of 34 million fixed lines in use by 2011. In the fixed line
Landline
A landline was originally an overland telegraph wire, as opposed to an undersea cable. Currently, landline refers to a telephone line which travels through a solid medium, either metal wire or optical fibre, as distinguished from a mobile cellular line, where transmission is via radio waves...
arena, BSNL
Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited
Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited is a state-owned telecommunications company headquartered in New Delhi, India. It is the largest provider of fixed telephony and fourth largest mobile telephony provider in India, and is also a provider of broadband services...
and MTNL
Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited
Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited is a state-owned telecommunications service provider in the metro cities of Mumbai and New Delhi in India. The company was a monopoly until 1992, when the telecom sector was opened to other service providers. Transparency makes us different- is the motto of the...
are the incumbents in their respective areas of operation and continue to enjoy the dominant service provider status in the domain of fixed line services. BSNL controls 79% of fixed line share in the country.
In the mobile telephony
Mobile phone
A mobile phone is a device which can make and receive telephone calls over a radio link whilst moving around a wide geographic area. It does so by connecting to a cellular network provided by a mobile network operator...
sector, Bharti Airtel
Bharti Airtel
Bharti Airtel Limited , commonly known as Airtel, is an Indian telecommunications company that operates in 20 countries across South Asia, Africa and the Channel Islands. It operates a GSM network in all countries, providing 2G or 3G services depending upon the country of operation...
controls 24.3% subscriber base followed by Reliance Communications
Reliance Communications
Reliance Communications Ltd. is an Indian broadband and telecommunications company headquartered in Navi Mumbai, India. RCOM is the world's 16th largest mobile phone operator with over 144 million subscribers. Established on 2004, a subsidiary of the Reliance Group...
with 18.9%, Vodafone
Vodafone
Vodafone Group Plc is a global telecommunications company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is the world's largest mobile telecommunications company measured by revenues and the world's second-largest measured by subscribers , with around 341 million proportionate subscribers as of...
with 18.8%, BSNL with 12.7% subscriber base as of June-2009. India had a total of 880 million mobile phone connections by 2011. Total fixed-line and wireless subscribers reached 688 million as of August 2010.
Motion pictures
The history of film in India begins with the screening of Auguste and Louis LumièreAuguste and Louis Lumière
The Lumière brothers, Auguste Marie Louis Nicolas and Louis Jean , were among the earliest filmmakers in history...
moving pictures in Bombay during the July of 1895. Raja Harishchandra
Raja Harishchandra
Raja Harishchandra , is a 1913 silent Indian film directed and produced by Dadasaheb Phalke, and is the first full-length Indian feature film...
—a full length feature film—was initiated in 1912 and completed later. Alam Ara
Alam Ara
Alam Ara is a 1931 film directed by Ardeshir Irani. It was the first Indian sound film.Irani recognized the importance that sound would have on the cinema, and raced to complete Alam Ara before several contemporary sound films. Alam Ara debuted at the Majestic Cinema in Mumbai on March 14, 1931...
(released 14 March 1931) —directed by Ardeshir Irani
Ardeshir Irani
Khan Bahadur Ardeshir Irani ; popularly known as Ardeshir Irani, was a writer, director, producer, actor, film distributor, film showman and cinematographer in the silent and sound eras of early Indian cinema. He was renowned for making films in Hindi, Telugu, English, German, Indonesian, Persian,...
—was the first Indian movie with dialogues.
Indian films were soon being followed throughout Southeast Asia and the Middle East—where modest dressing and subdued sexuality of these films was found to be acceptable to the sensibilities of the audience belonging to the various Islamic countries
Muslim world
The term Muslim world has several meanings. In a religious sense, it refers to those who adhere to the teachings of Islam, referred to as Muslims. In a cultural sense, it refers to Islamic civilization, inclusive of non-Muslims living in that civilization...
of the region. As cinema as a medium gained popularity in the country as many as 1, 000 films in various languages of India
Languages of India
The languages of India belong to several language families, the major ones being the Indo-European languages—Indo-Aryan and the Dravidian languages...
were produced annually. Hollywood
Hollywood, Los Angeles, California
Hollywood is a famous district in Los Angeles, California, United States situated west-northwest of downtown Los Angeles. Due to its fame and cultural identity as the historical center of movie studios and movie stars, the word Hollywood is often used as a metonym of American cinema...
also gained a foothold in India with special effect
Special effect
The illusions used in the film, television, theatre, or entertainment industries to simulate the imagined events in a story are traditionally called special effects ....
s films such as Jurassic Park
Jurassic Park (film)
Jurassic Park is a 1993 American science fiction adventure film directed by Steven Spielberg. The film is based on the novel of the same name by Michael Crichton. It stars Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, Richard Attenborough, Martin Ferrero, and Bob Peck...
(1993) and Speed (1994) being specially appreciated by the local audiences. Expatriates throughout the United Kingdom and in the United States continued to give rise to an international audiences to Indian movies, which, according to The Encyclopædia Britannica
Encyclopædia Britannica
The Encyclopædia Britannica , published by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., is a general knowledge English-language encyclopaedia that is available in print, as a DVD, and on the Internet. It is written and continuously updated by about 100 full-time editors and more than 4,000 expert...
(2008) entry on Bollywood
Bollywood
Bollywood is the informal term popularly used for the Hindi-language film industry based in Mumbai , Maharashtra, India. The term is often incorrectly used to refer to the whole of Indian cinema; it is only a part of the total Indian film industry, which includes other production centers producing...
, "continued to be formulaic story lines, expertly choreographed fight scenes, spectacular song-and-dance routines, emotion-charged melodrama, and larger-than-life heroes".