MUMBAI: Prasar Bharati CEO Shashi Shekhar Vempati is pleased as punch. The reason: Doordarshan’s coverage of India’s Republic Day parade celebration in New Delhi has been praised by all and sundry. A massive production by any yardstick, it saw the best of online editors, camera crew ensure that the telecast was like one never seen before.

48 cameras - including mobile buggy and robotic units - were deployed with hundreds of engineers and technicians ensuring there were no glitches in the multilingual telecast, which was produced in HD. The telecast was also done keeping the differently abled in mind: closed captioning in English and Hindi, as well as sign language interpretation of the proceedings, even as the commentary was made available in several languages.

The live stream of the parade on YouTube attracted upwards of 500,000 concurrent viewers and around nine million views.

What’s more, the pubcaster offered a 360 degree view of the parade on its DD Bharati YouTube channel.

Finally, DD quietly, almost unnoticed, signed a carriage deal with Disney+ Hotstar for DD India which is now available in the US, UK and Canada on the streaming service. Said information and broadcaster Prakash Javadekar: “Happy to note that Indians living in the UK, USA and Canada will now be able to watch DD India live on Hotstar. This step will go a long way in expanding DD's global footprint.”