📺 The Deal with English TV in Regulated India.
🔹On a Lighter Note!
Curious for context? Read the first in this series on Indian English.
In the earlier posts of this series, I’ve explored Indian English in its everyday quirks—from street signs to casual conversations and mixed-language exchanges.
But where did many urban Indians first encounter English beyond textbooks and family conversations?
For some, it was through voracious reading—books, newspapers, and visits to the British Library, which had branches in most cities - as well as through conversations in school, college, and work.
For many, it was and still is through television.
Before privatization and deregulation, English-language TV in India was limited, rationed, and often a late-night privilege.
TV featured just one channel: the state-funded ‘Doordarshan’1 with its restricted hours of programming.
While much of the developed world had color TV by the 1960s, India introduced it only in 1982, with a single state-owned manufacturer, Electronics Corporation of India Limited (ECIL).
As a result, most TV-owning households had the same brand and model2. Something to do with tariffs and protected markets 😉—a surefire deterrent to innovation, affordability, and consumer choice.
English TV shaped how Indians absorbed accents, phrases, and Western cultural references - long before the internet made everything accessible at a click.
With just one channel, every hour was national prime time—local programming simply didn’t exist.
So, viewers got used to the idea of one time, one show across the nation.
For instance, Wednesdays at 8 pm meant ‘Chitrahaar’3 - a compilation of Hindi film songs spanning decades of Bollywood movies. A beloved thirty minutes of music videos, offering something for both the old and the young.
At 7 pm on weekdays came ‘Krishi Darshan,’ (Farmers’ View)4 a program dreaded by urban dwellers.
This show was a perfect reminder of why the state shouldn’t be in charge of entertainment—it focused, sometimes endlessly, on buffaloes, and vets, with experts droning on about agricultural issues and dispensing advice to farmers in the dullest tones imaginable, set to music so dreary it could put the animals to sleep too.
Farming can be tough, but it can also be fascinating - even entertaining - especially if a sportscaster tried his hand at it.5 But you wouldn’t know it from this show!
Sometimes, the program toured random villages, interviewing farmers and explaining new farming techniques on camera—which, unfortunately for city teens, meant absolutely nothing.
The teenagers endured the last few minutes only because it aired right before Chitrahaar, clinging to the hope that at least one new popular song would make an appearance.
Whether they learned anything from the farmers, however, is doubtful.
Sundays at 7 pm brought the weekly Bollywood movie—a much-anticipated family event, often made unpredictable by random power cuts.
Every evening at 9 pm—then and now—meant primetime for English news, with anchors who became household names, some even celebrities, known for their diction, dress style (mostly sarees!), and polished delivery.
Why 9 pm? Because most Indians eat dinner late—just like many in Italy and Spain!
This was also an era when news was simple, factual—if sometimes sanitized (supposedly for the common good!)—and everyone received the same information at the same time.
It was also a time when anchors weren’t the news themselves.
For the English-leaning crowd, Doordarshan negotiated deals with BBC, ABC (Australia), and a few American channels to air select shows during non-peak hours—likely chosen by bureaucrats working within tight budgets.
Starved of English programming, audiences lapped up the meagre offers: ‘The Odd Couple,’ showcased the behaviors of a hypochondriac, while BBC’s ‘Yes, Minister,’ ‘Fawlty Towers’ and ‘Are you Being Served?’ introduced viewers to British humor.
Some English shows, likely acquired at a discount, weren’t nearly as funny—like BBC’s Sorry, about a 41-year-old man stuck with his domineering mother.
No closed captions (subtitles) meant viewers became adept at deciphering British and American accents, often wearing their fluency as a badge of honor.
Occasionally, special shows like Peter Brook’s ‘The Mahabharata’ aired but attracted a niche audience. But it was the Indian adaptation of the same epic, aired on Sunday mornings in the late '80s, that brought the nation to a standstill for an hour each week for two years.
Late-night TV—the final 11 pm-1 am slot—featured shows deemed too risqué for family viewing. That was, of course, a matter of opinion, as during those hours, viewers were treated to the exciting Italian series, ‘Sandokan,’6 based on Emilio Salgari’s stories, chronicling the adventures of a pirate who took on the British Navy.
After 1 am? Nothing.
Distraction-free living was by default!
Sunday mornings, by definition, were (and still are) leisure mornings in Indian homes.
One way to keep kids entertained—or simply out of the way—was to plop them in front of the TV. (No mobile devices required!)
Naturally, this made Sunday mid-mornings the perfect slot for airing Star Trek, bringing the series into Indian homes and creating new Trekkies.
The only catch to watching TV?
No TV guides, minimal newspaper listings, and no guarantees.
One week, you'd tune in for Sandokan; the next, a musical concert might have taken its place.
For college students, theatres were another outlet to watch English movies—often with far more risqué content than what made it to TV.
But only a few theatres screened English films, usually as morning shows (10 am – 12 noon). These times gave students a convenient cover for skipping classes while offering relative safety to women - their families, none the wiser.
Everything changed in 1991 with the lifting of protectionist measures and the start of globalization and privatization, as I shared in this post.
Today, India has over 900 national, international, and local channels operating 24/7 with international broadcasters like BBC, CNN, Star, ESPN, Nickelodeon, and CNBC offering both global and localized content. Entertainment, sports, and children’s programming are widely available, with global content and choice no longer a rarity.
The viewer has access to the many of the same choices as global audiences and, like elsewhere, has moved to consume content on-demand via global and local streaming platforms.
No more waiting for Star Trek on Sunday mornings or sitting through Krishi Darshan just for the sake of a Bollywood song.
But, if you ask an Indian why they’re watching something, they might still shrug and say, “Time-pass” - a colloquial expression for killing time!
Hope you enjoyed this perspective! Any war stories to share?
Doordarshan: Door = (afar) + Darshan (view/vision) = vision from a distance! (aka TV (Hindi/Sanskrit)
Initially, ECIL imported picture tubes before producing them locally and then licensing a handful of market vendors. Buying a TV went from choosing one brand to choosing from one of six with similar features.
Chitrahaar: Chitra (picture) + haar (garland) = garland of pictures. (Hindi/Sanskrit)
Krishi Darshan: Krishi (agriculture) + Darshan (view) = Views on agriculture. (Hindi/Sanskrit)
A 1976 Italian six-part television series directed by Sergio Sollima, based upon the novels of Emilio Salgari featuring the pirate hero Sandokan.
Here in America we had three channels in the 50s 60s and 70s until cable became popular in the late 70s and 80s. Many parents did not allow their children to watch TV. We were one of those households. Just weekends we could watch Disney and bonanza. During the week my parents watch the 5 o’clock news before dinner time.
When we moved up to Alaska in 1964, there were two commercial TV stations and one at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks. Shows from the lower forty eight states were taped and shipped up here so we saw them some three weeks later than originally aired.
The stations aired from five or six in the evening until midnight.