Rathikant Basu passed away on Sunday (March 17, 2024) in Ahmedabad, Gujarat. His daughter Aparajita Basu had shared a post informing about the her father’s demise. His mortal remains were consigned to flames at VS crematorium in the evening.
An IAS who served from 1964-96 as a bureaucrat and took over as Director General (DG) of Doordarshan. Subsequently joined Rupart Murdoch’s Star TV as Chief Executive Officer (CEO). In 2000, he launched Bengali satelite channel Tara.
Basu, a go getter had brought changes in Doordarshan channels offering freshness in content from the stale old structured programmes when he was the Director General of Doordarshan. “Doordarshan is the latest watched channel and we reach across 50 million homes in the country. We have trained people and most of the professionals today working with various private TV channels are from Doordarshan, said Rathikant Basu during an interview.
Some with a fresh approach towards the content, he had stressed on the need to produce programmes that would catter to the huge viewers base of all ages, “We have highest watched channel DD1 which is our prime channel. On this channel we show all type of programmes – news, views, current affairs, music, movies etc. Our plan is to bring niche channels – Sports, Business etc. The challenge is big but we are confident that we shall do it.” However he had agreed that DD was losing viewership, “I agree we have to compete with private players to attract viewership due to compitition but once we have the required viewership the advertisement revenues starts flowing, added Basu.
Rathikant Basu will be remembered because of many contributions in the field of television and media but his two major contributions for the Bengali community – One, launching DD7 (the niche Bangla channel on Doordarshan).
After his tenure with DD, Basu went back to Kolkata and started his own company, Broadcast World Wide Limited and started Tara satelite channel in 2000. The niche Bengali channel that became immensely popular with its bouquet of programmes from news, music, debates, current affairs and various live phone-in programmes. He sold the channel in 2011.
In the late 80’s it was during his tenure as DG Doordarshan, Dr Pronnoy Roy under his production house New Delhi Television (NDTV) had launched the popular news magazine, The World This Week (TWTW). Rest is history.
pallabghoshblog 