Satellite Instructional Television Experiment
Satellite Instructional Television Experiment or SITE was an experimental satellite communications project launched in
The experiment ran for one year from 1 August 1975 to 31 July 1976, covering more than 2400 villages in 20 districts of six
Background
As part of its
At the same time, India was trying to launch its national space program under the leadership of Vikram Sarabhai. India was interested in the role of satellites for the purpose of communication and asked UNESCO to undertake a feasibility study for a project in that field. Between 18 November 1967 and 8 December 1967, UNESCO sent an expert mission to India to prepare a report on a pilot project in the use of satellite communication. The expert panel concluded that the such a project would be feasible. Following the report, a study team of three engineers from India visited USA and France in June 1967, and came to the conclusion that India could meet the technical requirements for the project.[3] Following this, the Indian government set up the National Satellite Communications Group SATCOM in 1968 to look into the possible uses of a synchronous communications satellite for India. This group consisted of representatives from various cabinet ministries, ISRO and All India Radio (AIR) And Doordarshan. The group recommended that India should use the ATS-6 satellite– a second generation satellite developed by NASA– for an experiment in educational television.[3]
India-USA Memorandum of Understanding Signed, ESD Created | 18 September 1969 |
First INDIA-USA SITE Meeting | 1 April 1970 |
AVID (NOW SSG) Created | 1 June 1971 |
AIR Base Production Centres Operational | August 1974 |
Bombay SITE Studio Commissioned | 15 August 1974 |
DRS Deployment Phase I Begins | 15 November 1974 |
ESCES Operational | January 1975 |
Village Selection Over | 1 February 1975 |
DRS Deployment Phase II Begins | March 1975 |
ESCES and DRS Checkout With S/C Simulator | March 1975 |
Tenth ISRO-NASA Meeting | April 1975 |
Delivery Of All DRS Units Completed By ECIL | April 1975 |
First Programme Produced In Ahmedabad Studio | 8 May 1975 |
ATS-6 Begins Moving From 94°W | 21 May 1975 |
ESCES Checkout With INTELSAT | June 1975 |
ATS-6 Visible To ESCES | 13 June 1975 |
DRS In Villages Receive Signals | 14 June 1975 |
Amritsar Earth Station Receives Signals | 17 June 1975 |
ATS-6 Arrives At 35° E | 27 June 1975 |
Delhi Earth Station Operational | 3 July 1975 |
DRS Checkout | 3 to 5 July 1975 |
Nadiad TV Transmitter Operational | 7 July 1975 |
Baseline For SITE Impact Survey (Adults) Completed | 7 July 1975 |
SITE System Demonstration To Chairman, ISRO | 9 and 10 July 1975 |
Start Of SITE | 1 August 1975 |
Objectives
As per the Memorandum of Understanding signed between the two countries, the objectives of the project were divided into two parts—general objectives and specific objectives. The general objectives of the project were to:
- gain experience in the development, testing and management of a satellite-based instructional television system particularly in rural areas and to determine optimal system parameters;
- demonstrate the potential value of satellite technology in the rapid development of effective mass communications in developing countries;
- demonstrate the potential value of satellite broadcast TV in the practical instruction of village inhabitants; and
- stimulate national development in India, with important managerial, economic, technological and social implications.
The primary social objectives from an Indian perspective were to educate the populace about issues related to family planning, agricultural practices and national integration. The secondary objectives were to impart general school and adult education, train teachers, improve other occupational skills and to improve general health and hygiene through the medium of satellite broadcasts. Besides these social objectives, India also wanted to gain experience in all the technical aspects of the system, including broadcast and reception facilities and TV program material.
The primary US objective was to test the design and functioning of an efficient, medium-power, wide bandspace-borne FM transmitter, operating in the 800–900 MHz band and gain experience on the utilisation of this space application.[4]
International collaboration
A joint ISRO-NASA working group was established even before the Memorandum of Understanding was signed. This working group studied the possibility of using a communications satellite for TV broadcast in India. After the MoU was signed, many review meetings were held between NASA and ISRO scientists. Indian scientists visited NASA to study front-end converters and earth station operations. On India's request, the
The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) provided assistance of $500,000 for setting up the Experimental Satellite Communications Earth Station (ESCES) at Ahmedabad and nominated the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) as the executing agency for this project. The UNDP provided another $1.5 million, for setting up a TV studio at Ahmedabad and a TV transmitter at Pij in Kheda district. It also gave assistance for setting up a TV Training Institute to train many of the programme production staff who would join All India Radio to work on SITE. UNESCO was the executing agency for this project. UNICEF contributed to SITE by sponsoring 21 film modules produced by Shyam Benegal, a noted Indian filmmaker. This resulted in a lot of interaction between filmmakers and folk-artists. Shyam Benegal went on to include many of these artists in his children's feature film Charandas Chor (1975).[6]
Technical details
The production of the television programmes was decentralised, with three Base Production Centres located at
The television programmes prepared by the Indian government at the four studios were transmitted at 6
The DRS undertook terrestrial broadcasting for large cities and direct broadcasting to SITE television sets for remote villages. However, it did not provide for small towns where the TV set density was higher than in the villages while not as much as in a city. The concept of a
Village selection
As the broadcasting time was limited, it was decided that the direct reception receivers would only be installed in 2400 villages in six regions spread across the country. Technical and social criteria were used to select suitable areas to conduct this experiment.
Cluster | District | Maintenance centers |
---|---|---|
Andhra Pradesh | Hyderabad
|
Hyderabad
|
Kurnool | Nandyal | |
Medak | Sangareddy | |
Mahbubnagar
|
Nagarkurnool | |
Karnataka | Kalaburagi | Bagalkot
|
Raichur | Raichur | |
Bijapur | Bijapur
| |
Bihar | Muzaffarpur | Muzaffarpur |
Champaran | Motihari | |
Saharsa | Saharsa | |
Darbhanga | Darbhanga, Samastipur | |
Madhya Pradesh | Raipur* | Raipur, Mahasamund |
Bilaspur* | Bilaspur | |
Durg* | Rajnandgaon | |
Orissa
|
Sambalpur | Sambalpur |
Dhenkanal
|
Dhenkanal, Angul
| |
Baudh Khandmals | Boudh | |
Rajasthan | Jaipur | Jaipur, Chomu |
Kota | Kota | |
Sawai Madhopur | Gangapur
|
* These districts are now located in the state of Chhattisgarh.
Programming
All India Radio had the main responsibility for programme generation and the programmes were made in consultation with the government. Special committees on education, agriculture, health and family planning identified their own programme priorities and conveyed it to AIR.
Two types of programmes were prepared for broadcasting:
Due to linguistic and cultural differences, it was agreed that all core programmes would be cluster-specific, and would be in the primary language of the region. A brief commentary giving the gist of the programme would be available on the second audio channel, to keep up the interest of the audience in other language regions. All clusters would also receive 30 minutes of common programmes, including news, which would be broadcast only in Hindi.[15]
6:00 | 7:00 | 7:30 | 7:50-8:30 | |||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Mins. | Bihar/Madhya Pradesh/Rajasthan | Common Programme | Mins. | Orissa | Mins. | Andhra Pradesh/Karnataka |
10 | Agriculture (MP) | News (all clusters) | 10 | Agriculture | 10 | Agriculture (AP) |
20 | Cultural | 10 | Cultural | 10 | Cultural (Urdu) | |
10 | Health | 10 | Cultural (Karnataka) | |||
15 | General Education/Information (Film) | 10 | General Education Community Matters (Karnataka) | |||
5 | Short Film |
Evaluation
The social research and evaluation of SITE was done by ISRO's special SITE Research and Evaluation Cell (REC). The REC consisted of around 100 persons who were located in each of the SITE clusters, at the SITE studio in Bombay, and at the headquarters of the REC in Ahmedabad. The research design was finalized by the SITE Social Science Research Co-ordination Committee under the chairmanship of Dr. M. S. Gore, Director of the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Bombay. Impact on primary school children was studied under a joint project involving ISRO and the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT). The overall evaluation design was divided into three stages. The first stage, the formative or input research, was a detailed study of the potential audience. The second stage, process evaluation, was the evaluation carried out during the life-time of SITE. This evaluation provided information about the reaction of the villagers to different programmes. The third stage, the summative evaluation, involved a number of different studies to measure the impact of SITE. These included the Impact Survey (Adults) to measure the impact on adults, SITE Impact Survey Children (SIS-C) to measure the impact on school children, and the qualitative anthropology study to measure, at a macro-level, the change brought by TV in rural society.[17]
Besides the social evaluation, a technical evaluation was also carried out to help India develop future systems. All major sub-systems of the earth station were tested and evaluated before SITE was launched. This was done firstly using a spacecraft simulator from NASA, then using the
Impact
As decided in the original agreement, the SITE program ended in July, 1976 and NASA shifted its ATS satellite away from India, despite demands from Indian villagers, journalists and others such as noted writer Arthur C. Clarke (who was presented with a SITE television set in Sri Lanka) for NASA to continue the experiment.[2]
The SITE transmissions had a very significant impact in the Indian villages. For the entire year, thousands of villagers gathered around the TV set and watched the shows. Studies were conducted on the social impact of the experiment and on viewership trends. It was found that general interest and viewership were highest in the first few months of the program (200 to 600 people per TV set) and then declined gradually (60 to 80 people per TV set). This decline was due to several factors, including faults developing in the television equipment, failure in electricity supply, and hardware defects, as also the villagers' pre-occupation with domestic or agricultural work. Impact on the rural population was highest in the fields of agriculture and family planning. Nearly 52% of viewers reported themselves amenable to applying the new knowledge gained by them.[19]
Similar experiments were conducted in the Appalachian region, Rocky Mountains, Alaska, Canada, China and Latin America in the mid-seventies and early eighties. These experiments demonstrated that satellite TV could play a very important role in providing education.[20]
Before SITE, the focus was on the use of terrestrial transmission for television signals. But SITE showed that India could make use of advanced technology to fulfill the socio-economic needs of the country. This led to an increased focus on satellite broadcasting in India. ISRO began preparations for a country-wide satellite system. After conducting several technical experiments, the Indian National Satellite System was launched by ISRO in 1982.[21] The Indian space program remained committed to the goal of using satellites for educational purposes. In September 2004, India launched EDUSAT, which was the first satellite in the world built exclusively to serve the educational sector. EDUSAT is used to meet the demand for an interactive satellite-based distance education system for India.[22][23]
References
- Evaluation Report On Satellite Instructional Television Experiment (SITE) (PDF). Planning Commission, India. 1981. Archived from the original (PDF) on 10 April 2013. Retrieved 4 December 2006.
- Chander, Romesh; Karnik, Kiran (1976). Planning for Satellite Broadcasting: The Indian Instructional TV experiment (PDF). UNESCO Press. ISBN 92-3-101392-0.
- Srinivasan, Raman (1997). "16: No Free Launch: Designing the Indian National Satellite". In Butrica, Andrew J. (ed.). Beyond The Ionosphere: Fifty Years of Satellite Communication. The NASA History Series. Bibcode:1997bify.book.....B.
- Pal, Y.; H. Bloom; S. Harris (7 October 1975). "Some Experiences in Preparing for a Satellite Television Experiment for Rural India (and Discussion)". Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series A, Mathematical and Physical Sciences. 345 (1643). The Royal Society: 437–447. S2CID 112052807.
- Intelsat III AND Arvi Earth Station
Notes
- ^ Paterson, Chris. "Satellite". Museum of Broadcast Communications. Retrieved 13 September 2006.
- ^ a b c Butrica (1997), Chapter 16.
- ^ a b Chander (1976), p. 9.
- ^ a b "Memorandum of understanding between the government of India and the government of the United States of America regarding India – U. S. A. ITV satellite experiment project" (PDF). Government of India, NASA. 18 September 1969. Archived from the original (PDF) on 26 May 2019. Retrieved 3 December 2006.
- ^ "Satellite Instructional Television Experiment Memoirs" (PDF). SAC.gov.in. 12 August 2015. p. 26. Archived from the original (PDF) on 13 April 2019. Retrieved 13 April 2019.
- ^ Chander (1976), p. 49.
- ^ Chander (1976), p. 28.
- ISBN 1-884989-19-5.
- ^ Pal (1975), p. 439
- ^ Chander (1976), p. 14.
- ^ a b Chander (1976), p. 15.
- ^ Pal (1975), p. 442-443
- ^ Chander (1976), p. 17.
- ^ Planning Commission (1981), p. 1.
- ^ Chander (1976), p. 27.
- ^ Chander (1976), p. 56.
- ^ Chander (1976), pp. 44–46.
- ^ Chander (1976), pp. 47–48.
- ^ Planning Commission (1981), pp. 3–4.
- Rao, U. R. "Space Technology for Universal Education". The First Ten K R Narayanan Orations: Essays by Eminent Persons on the Rapidly Transforming Indian Economy. Australia South Asia Research Centre, ANU. Retrieved 14 November 2007.
- ^ Joshi, Subhash (August 2000). "25 years of satellite broadcasting in India". Orbicom. Archived from the original on 2 August 2008. Retrieved 14 November 2007.
- ^ "EDUSAT launched successfully". The Hindu. 20 September 2004. Archived from the original on 6 December 2007. Retrieved 27 November 2007.
- ^ "Education satellite launched". Focus magazine. BBC. 21 September 2004. Retrieved 27 November 2007.