300 DD staff to get training on HD Format

           A British agency will provide 'specialised' training to 300 staff of Doordarshan from December 3 to cover on 'High Definition Format' (HDF) of the sports events in the Commonwealth Games (CWG) scheduled to be held in New Delhi in October next year for which the Indian public broadcaster has the sole telecast rights. As the CWG would be telecast for the first time on HDF, the training would be through till June 2010 where the Doordarshan staffers would be getting ''excellent exposure'' to all sports events. 

         They would also do 'pilots' sometime in June-July on Wrestling, Boxing and Weightlifting with SISI-Live, the former agency British Public broadcaster, BBC, overseeing the production after its training, Doordarshan Director-General Aruna Sharma told the media 

        The Rs 240-crore contract with the British agency signed recently would be through the Commonwealth Games both in way of equipment purchase, training and support till the completion of the CWG. The coverage of Doordarshan of the World Badminton Championship early this year and the World Snooker Championship early this month at Hyderabad had been praised by the International sporting bodies and foreign media for the high quality of its coverage.  The World Badminton event got Rs 69 lakh and the World Snooker Rs 20 lakh of revenue for the public broadcaster which telecast both the world events at Hyderabad.

          ''We had OB vans with four cameras which were enhanced to eight during the Hyderabad events. For the CWG we will have 12 cameras and 18 cameras fitted on OBs and also for underwater shots,'' she said. The Centre had given Rs 366 crore grant and expects a revenue of Rs 110 crore from CWG.  ''We are looking for more (revenue) and will soon tie up with international ad and marketing agencies for boosting business on its telecast rights of the CWG,'' she added