Union Minister Anurag Singh Thakur Launches PB-SHABD and Revamped News Services

New Delhi: In a historic move for India’s information and broadcasting sector, Union Minister of Information and Broadcasting, Anurag Singh Thakur, inaugurated PB-SHABD—a news sharing service from Prasar Bharati. The launch event, held at the National Media Centre in New Delhi, also unveiled the updated websites of DD News and Akashvani News, along with the upgraded News on Air mobile app.

Addressing the gathering, Minister Thakur emphasized the significance of the day, highlighting Prasar Bharati’s extensive network for news gathering and delivery across the country in various regional languages. He announced the introduction of PB-SHABD—a revolutionary initiative intending to share accurate and meaningful content with the print and electronic media industry of India. The service, offering a clean feed without the Doordarshan logo, will curate diverse content from all corners of the country in multiple languages, providing a single-point source of news content for media organizations.

Minister Thakur expressed his belief that PB-SHABD would transform the news industry, particularly benefitting smaller news organizations lacking extensive content-gathering networks. The service, initially offered free of cost for the first year, will cover news stories in all major Indian languages across fifty categories.

Discussing the revamped websites of Doordarshan News and All India Radio, along with the NewsOnAIR app, Minister Thakur highlighted the continued relevance of All India Radio in the age of extensive mobile connectivity. The enhanced features of the app include personalized news feeds, push notifications for breaking news, multimedia content integration, offline reading capability, live streaming for real-time coverage, easy social media sharing, location-based news delivery, bookmarking for saving articles, and powerful search functionality.

Secretary of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Sanjay Jaju, congratulated the Prasar Bharati team for the SHABD pilot and the launch of the new website and app. He anticipated that the portal would create synergy and prove beneficial in disseminating meaningful news content across the country.

CEO of Prasar Bharati, Gaurav Dwivedi, outlined the outreach plan to media organizations, sharing audio, video, photo, and text-based information gathered by the extensive Prasar Bharati network.

The PB-SHABD platform, designed to provide daily news feeds in various formats, aims to empower subscribers from the media landscape with the latest news from different parts of the country. The introductory offer of free services is expected to support smaller newspapers, TV channels, and digital portals. Details are available on the official PB-SHABD website.