Prasar Bharati to assist Afghanistan in starting news channel

Prasar Bharati will assist the Afghan government broadcaster - Radio and Television Afghanistan (RTA) to start a news channel in the war-ravaged country.
The Afghan government is planning to start in three months a news channel that will telecast news initially for 6 hours, and later will be transformed into a round-the-clock channel.
This would be the first news channel run by the Afghan government though some private channels are already there.
Officials of RTA signed an MoU with public broadcaster Prasar Bharati for co-operation on broadcasting and sought technical and training support for its upcoming channel.
RTA Director General Zarin Anzor and A R Panjshiri, Afghanistan's head of International Relations met Prasar Bharati CEO Jawhar Sircar and also sought help in repair and maintenance of their existing transmission facilities such as uplink, short wave transmitter and TV network.

The RTA has also asked Prasar Bharati to provide training to its journalists for its upcoming channels.

The two broadcasters have also made an agreement to exchange programmes in the field of culture, education, science, entertainment or other areas of mutual interest. They also agreed to explore co-production opportunities.
Prasar Bharati, in a statement here, said Doordarshan will send two senior TV producers to RTA to help improve the quality and bring creativeness, innovations in their home productions.
As part of its programme of development and reconstruction of war-ravaged Afghanistan, India has been providing assistance to the country in the field of Information and Broadcasting.

A number of transmission towers, television studios with modern equipment have been provided.
The RTA has a network of 24 TV transmitter with downlink facilities, one 100 kw short wave transmitter with 7 antennae catering service to its neighbouring countries and one uplink station in Kabul providing connectivity.