The history
From an attic in London to a teleport in Noida: a century of putting live pictures on the air.
A TV station is a factory that runs in real time. Cameras, a control room, recorders, compressors and transmitters all have to work together, to the second, every day. The pieces arrived one by one: live pictures in the 1920s, regular stations in the 1930s, tape in the 1950s, satellites in the 1960s. In India, one experimental studio in Delhi grew into Doordarshan's national network, then satellites and cable brought hundreds of private channels, and phones brought streaming.
26 January 1926
Live television pictures shown to an audience
John Logie Baird, UK
2 November 1936
Regular high-definition TV service
BBC, Alexandra Palace
4 December 1950
Teleprompter used on air
CBS, USA
14 April 1956
Practical videotape recorder
Ampex VRX-1000, USA
15 September 1959
Television in India
Delhi
15 August 1982
Colour TV in India
Doordarshan
October 1992
Private Hindi satellite channel
Zee TV
2 October 2003
DTH service in India
Dish TV
16 December 2004
Free satellite TV in India
DD Direct Plus (DD Free Dish)
1926 – 1958
Inventors send the first live pictures, the first stations open, and the teleprompter and videotape arrive.
1926
26 January 1926
About 40 scientists climbed the stairs to Baird's attic lab in Soho to see live, moving faces on a small, flickering screen. His system scanned the scene with spinning discs into about 30 lines.
Why it mattered. It proved a moving picture could be sent as a signal. Every TV station since has been built around that idea.
1936
2 November 1936
The BBC opened a regular high-definition service from studios at Alexandra Palace. Two rival systems took turns on air, and in 1937 the all-electronic Marconi-EMI system won.
Why it mattered. It was the first TV station in the modern sense: studios, cameras, a control room and a transmitter on a daily schedule.
1945
October 1945
In a magazine article called “Extra-Terrestrial Relays”, a young engineer who later became a famous science-fiction writer showed that three satellites 35,786 km above the equator could relay signals round the whole world. At that height a satellite goes round once a day, so it seems to hang still.
Why it mattered. The geostationary orbit he described now carries almost every TV channel in India.
1950
4 December 1950
A mechanical scroll of paper beside the camera, moved by a hidden operator, helped actors in the CBS soap The First Hundred Years remember their lines. Later, Jess Oppenheimer, the producer of I Love Lucy, patented a prompter that reflected the script onto glass in front of the lens.
Why it mattered. Reading while looking into the lens made the news presenter possible as we know it.
1956
14 April 1956
Ampex showed the first practical videotape recorder, the VRX-1000, to a broadcasters' convention. Until then, a show was either live or filmed off a screen. Tape let stations record, replay and time-shift programmes.
Why it mattered. The ‘VT’ called for in every control room still takes its name from video tape, even though clips now play from servers.
1959 – 1990
Doordarshan grows from a Delhi experiment into a national network, carried by satellites and local transmitters.
1959
15 September 1959
Television in India began as an experiment in Delhi, with a makeshift studio, a small transmitter and a few community TV sets. Programmes ran for about an hour, twice a week, on education and health.
Why it mattered. It was the start of Doordarshan, which for three decades was the only channel most Indians knew.
1962
10–23 July 1962
Telstar 1 relayed the first live television pictures across the Atlantic. It orbited low and fast, so it could only link the two sides for about 20 minutes at a time.
Why it mattered. It showed a satellite could carry TV; the next step was to put one where it would never set.
1965
6 April 1965 (launch)
The first commercial communications satellite in geostationary orbit could link Europe and North America around the clock, just as Clarke had described 20 years earlier. The same year, Indian TV began a daily service with a news bulletin.
Why it mattered. From then on, dishes could simply point at one spot in the sky.
1967
26 January 1967
A programme on farming began for villages around Delhi, with TV sets placed where farmers could gather. It is often described as Indian television's longest-running programme.
Why it mattered. It set Indian TV's early purpose: to teach and inform, not only to entertain.
1975
1 August 1975 – 31 July 1976
For a year, the American ATS-6 satellite beamed programmes on farming, health and schooling to more than 2,400 villages, each with a TV set and a dish. Crowds of hundreds gathered around single sets.
Why it mattered. It proved that one satellite could reach the whole country, the idea behind Indian DTH and Free Dish.
1976
1 April 1976
Television was separated from All India Radio and became Doordarshan, a department of its own. By then TV had spread to Mumbai, Amritsar and other cities.
Why it mattered. A separate TV organisation grew its own studios, newsrooms and transmitters.
1982
15 August and 19 November 1982
The Prime Minister's Independence Day speech went out in colour on 15 August 1982. National broadcasts via the INSAT-1A satellite began that year, and colour was rushed in for the Asian Games held in Delhi from 19 November.
Why it mattered. A national feed by satellite, relayed by local transmitters, turned Doordarshan into a truly national station.
1983
30 August 1983
After INSAT-1A failed within months, INSAT-1B was launched from the Space Shuttle and began working that October. Its C-band transponders carried the national programme to transmitters all over India, which Doordarshan then added at great speed.
Why it mattered. Satellite plus low-power transmitters is how TV reached small towns in the 1980s.
1984
7 July 1984
Hum Log, a family drama about social issues, became India's first TV soap and the first Indian show with a sponsor. Episodes were said to draw more than 50 million viewers.
Why it mattered. Sponsored serials showed that TV could earn money from advertising, the model most channels still follow.
1987
25 January 1987
Ramayan ran on Sunday mornings for 78 episodes. Estimates of its audience run to 80–100 million people, and streets and shops fell quiet while it was on.
Why it mattered. It showed the enormous reach of one national channel before satellite TV arrived.
1991 – 2011
Private satellite channels, 24-hour news, cable operators and DTH dishes multiply the choice.
1991
December 1991 and October 1992
Star TV began beaming channels to India from the AsiaSat 1 satellite, and cable operators strung wires from their dishes to homes. In October 1992 Zee TV launched as the first private Hindi channel.
Why it mattered. The end of one-channel TV: soon there were dozens, then hundreds, of channels.
1994
17 June 1994
DirecTV began one of the first all-digital direct-to-home services, sending MPEG-2 compressed channels to 45 cm dishes. MPEG-2 let one satellite transponder carry several channels instead of one.
Why it mattered. Compression is why a single satellite can carry hundreds of channels today.
1995
1995; 24-hour channel in December 2000
Aaj Tak began as a short daily Hindi news programme on DD Metro in 1995, anchored by S. P. Singh. In December 2000 it relaunched as a 24-hour Hindi news channel.
Why it mattered. Round-the-clock private news brought live reporters, OB vans and the fight for ratings.
1997
23 November 1997
Doordarshan and All India Radio were placed under Prasar Bharati, an autonomous public-service broadcaster set up by an act of Parliament.
Why it mattered. It separated the public broadcaster from day-to-day government control, at least on paper.
2003
2 October 2003
After a ban in 1997 and a new policy in 2000, Dish TV launched India's first direct-to-home satellite service. Tata Sky followed in 2007.
Why it mattered. Homes could now skip the local cable operator and have their own dish and set-top box.
2004
16 December 2004
DD Direct Plus, now DD Free Dish, began offering free satellite channels to anyone with a small dish and a set-top box, with no monthly fee. Private channels pay for slots on it.
Why it mattered. It reached about 49 million homes in 2024–25, making it one of the largest TV platforms in India.
2007
3 July 2007
Private news channels formed an association and set up a standards authority to hear complaints. It is now called the NBDSA (News Broadcasting and Digital Standards Authority).
Why it mattered. Self-regulation sits alongside the government's Programme Code in deciding what news may air.
2012 – today
Cable goes digital, ratings get meters and watermarks, and cheap data puts live TV on phones.
2012
31 October 2012 – 31 March 2017
A 2011 law made cable TV digital and addressable (DAS) in four phases: the big metros first in 2012, the last towns and villages by 2017. Every home needed a set-top box, and operators had to know exactly which channels each home paid for.
Why it mattered. It ended analogue cable and made the transparent pricing rules that followed possible.
2015
April 2015
BARC, set up by broadcasters, advertisers and ad agencies, began publishing ratings from about 11,000 meters that listen for hidden audio watermarks. The panel grew to about 55,000 homes by 2023.
Why it mattered. Ratings decide ad prices, so how they are measured matters to every channel.
2016
5 September 2016
Jio's launch with free and then very cheap 4G data made streaming affordable for hundreds of millions of people. Apps such as Hotstar (from 2015) streamed live cricket and TV serials to phones.
Why it mattered. OTT streaming became the fourth road to the viewer, alongside tower, cable and satellite.
2019
Notified 2017, in force early 2019
TRAI's New Tariff Order made every pay channel declare a monthly price and let viewers pick channels one by one or in packs, plus a network capacity fee. From 2020 that fee was capped at ₹130 for 200 channels; the cap was removed in 2024.
Why it mattered. It changed how cable and DTH bills are built.
2022
31 March 2022
Doordarshan switched off its last batch of analogue terrestrial transmitters, more than a thousand of which had been closed in phases. About 50 were kept in border and coastal areas.
Why it mattered. Most Indian homes now get TV by dish, cable or the internet.
2026
21 August 2026
The government removed the rule, in place since 2006, that limited ads to 12 minutes in a clock hour, and TRAI then repealed its own matching regulations.
Why it mattered. Channels can now decide how much advertising to run; viewers and ratings will decide if they overdo it.
By the numbers
The number of homes with BARC people meters, from the start of ratings in 2015.
Did you know?
One geostationary hop, up and down, is over 72,000 km: about a quarter of a second even at the speed of light.
Doordarshan's first broadcasts in 1959 went out for about an hour, twice a week.
By 2025 the Government of India counted 918 private satellite TV channels.
The ‘VT’ in a control room stands for video tape, even though clips now play from hard drives.
DD Free Dish needs no monthly fee; private channels bid for slots on it.
The people
1888 – 1946 · Inventor · Scotland
Gave the first public demonstration of live moving television in 1926.
1917 – 2008 · Engineer and writer · UK and Sri Lanka
Described the geostationary relay satellite in 1945, two decades before one flew.
1919 – 2011 · Engineer · USA
Built the first teleprompter in 1950.
1919 – 1971 · Physicist and space pioneer · India
Championed satellite TV for Indian villages; SITE ran after his death.
died 2007 · Newsreader · India
Often named as Doordarshan's first newsreader, in the 1960s.
born 1950 · Businessman · India
Founded Zee TV, India's first private Hindi satellite channel, in 1992.
1948 – 1997 · Journalist · India
Anchored Aaj Tak's daily news programme on DD Metro from 1995.
Where it happened
Sources
Dates marked “c.” are approximate, and historians sometimes disagree about who was first. If you spot a mistake, tell us.
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