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Doordarshan News, usually referred to by its abbreviation as DD News, is India's only 24-hour terrestrial TV news channel. It telecasts over 16 hours of live news bulletins daily in Hindi, English, Sanskrit, and Urdu. Regional News Units attached to different Doordarshan Kendras also telecast daily news bulletins in regional languages. News headlines and breaking news updates are regular features, and headlines are even accessible via SMS.
From many years Doordarshan was one and only source of News on Indian Television. To enjoy its reach. Doordarshan joined hands of CNN, and launch a news and current affairs channel DD CNNi in 1995. At other hand, DD was playing major games to cater international audience via its DD International (Later renamed to DD World and DD India) channel, and also providing English News-Views-Current Affairs and Infotainment programmings to Indian audience via its DD3 channel. Its DD National and DD Metro channels were also delivering news content, and many of the private producers too had their news programs on DD Channels. To en-cash all these DD Launch its DD News Channel in late 1999, which was failed due to lack of viewership and sponsors as it was not available on terrestrial mode. They converted it in DD Bharati on 26 January 2002.
Later DD Again launched its DD News Channel by replacing DD Metro on 3 November 2003 and assured its availability on terrestrial mode to enjoy its reach, which was 21.6% by area and 44.9% by population of India. Prasar Bharati board approved the proposal to start a 24-hour news channel in place of DD Metro, which was closing. This was subsequently approved by the Union Cabinet in an 3 October 2003 meeting.
DD News quickly gained popularity among the viewers, exceeding its commercial revenue target of Rs. 2 crores for 2003-04, and the channel earned Rs. 10 crores. The popularity of the channel amongst advertisers continues unabated and the revenue figures for the current year (04-05) have already crossed Rs. 10 crores. The main reason for this is that DD News is a free channel unlike the private and better channels that are pay channels. India's public broadcaster Doordarshan benefited immensely from DD News's launch, as its in-house production churned out lots of quality content, achieving economies of scale. Later Doordarshan Continued its journey on News Segment by launching 2 Parliamentary News Channels: DD Lok Sabha and DD Rajya Sabha, which were later renamed to Lok Sabha TV (LSTV) and Rajya Sabha TV (RSTV) respectively.
DD News also carries financial information about stocks and commodities, accessing information from the National Stock Exchange of India (NSE) and the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) in addition to leading commodity exchanges including the National Commodity and Derivatives Exchange (NCDEX) and the MCX Stock Exchange. The DD News App for mobile (iOS & Android) was launched recently on 7 May 2015 by the I&B Minister of India Shri Arun Jaitly which aims to instantly communicate news on a 24x7 basis.