Prasar Bharati, India's public broadcaster, introduced a new service called PB-SHABD (Prasar Bharati-Shared Audio Visuals for Broadcast and Dissemination). This service offers free content to registered news organizations for a year. The announcement was made by Union Minister for Information and Broadcasting, Anurag Thakur.
PB-SHABD aims to provide news content across various platforms without any copyright or credit obligations. It offers newsfeed, videos, audio, text, and images to newspapers, periodicals, TV channels, and social media news channels registered with the I&B Ministry. However, this content will not be directly accessible to end users.
The service is available on the websites of DD News, Akashvani News, and the updated News on Air mobile app. Prasar Bharati aims to share accurate and meaningful content with the print and electronic media industry. The provided content will be clean feed, without the need to display the Doordarshan logo, which is expected to benefit smaller news organizations.
According to officials, PB-SHABD will offer news stories in all major Indian languages across 50 categories. Minister Thakur mentioned that this service is offered free of cost for the first year as an introductory offer. This initiative is expected to support smaller news organizations and facilitate access to diverse news content for the public.