Satellite Instructional Television Experiment

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An ISRO technician next to a working model of the solid-state television set, designed with NASA assistance, for use in SITE. Image courtesy NASA

The Satellite Instructional Television Experiment or SITE was an experimental satellite communications project launched in India in 1975 designed jointly by NASA and the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO). The project made available informational television programmes to rural India. The joint experiment ran for one full year from 1 August 1975 to 31 July 1976 covering more than 2500 villages in six Indian states. The program was highly successful in that it was a tale of technological cooperation between unfriendly democracies. The experiment played a major role in helping India to develop its own satellite network as part of its INSAT program.^[1]

[edit] History

During the 1960s, NASA was working on a series of advanced technological satellites as part of their Applications Technology Satellites program. NASA wanted to field test the project. This involved the direct broadcast of television to receivers from a satellite. NASA narrowed down on three countries – Brazil, The People's Republic of China and India – which were both geographically and socially suitable for such a project. But Brazil's population was concentrated in the cities and China had a communist government, which left only India. However, relations between the two democracies were strained and India was considered to be a friend of the Soviet Union. Also, the U.S. State Department was not enthusiastic about India and wanted India to ask for help first.

At the same time, India was looking to launch its national space program under the leadership of Vikram Sarabhai, considered as the Father of the Indian Space Program. Between 18 November 1967 and 8 December 1967, UNESCO sent an expert mission to India to prepare a report on a pilot project in the use of satellite communication. The Indian government set up an inter-ministerial group called the National Satellite Communications Group, or NASCOM group in 1968 to look into the possible uses of a synchronous communications satellite for India. This group consisted of representatives from various ministries, ISRO, All India Radio (AIR). The group recommended that India should use the ATS-6 satellite for the experiment.^[2] Arnold Frutkin, then NASA's director of international programs, arranged to have Sarabhai approach NASA for help. Sarabhai saw this as a great opportunity for India to expand it's space program and to train Indian scientists and engineers. Thus the Indian Department of Atomic Energy and NASA signed an agreement for SITE in 1966.^[3] The experiment was launched on 1 August 1975.

[edit] Objectives

The objectives of the project were divided into two parts: general objectives and specific objectives as per the Memorandum of Understanding signed between the two countries. The general objectives of the project were to:

• Gain experience in the development, testing and management of a satellite-based instructional television system particularly in rural areas and to determine optimal system parameters.
• Demonstrate the potential value of satellite technology in the rapid development of effective mass communications in developing countries.
• Demonstrate the potential value of satellite broadcast TV in the practical instruction of village inhabitants.
• Stimulate national development in India, with important managerial, economic, technological and social implications.

The primary general objectives from an Indian perspective were to educate the masses about issues related to family planning, agricultural practices and national integration. The secondary objectives were to impart general school and adult education, train teachers, improve other occupational skills and to improve general health and hygiene through the medium of satellite broadcasts. Besides these social objectives, India also wanted to gain experience in all aspects of receivers, broadcast facilities and TV program material.

The primary US objective was to test the design and functioning of an efficient, medium-power, wide band space-borne FM transmitter, operating in the 800-900 MHz band and gain experience on the utility of this space application.^[4]

[edit] Technical details

ATS-F coverage of India at 860 MHz

The ATS-6 satellite used in the project was a second generation satellite of NASA's Applications Technology Satellites program. The television programs were prepared by the Indian government at four studios belonging to All India Radio - one each at Cuttack, Delhi and Hyderabad and the ISRO studio at Mumbai. These programs were transmitted at 6 GHz to ATS 6 from one of two ground stations in India located in Delhi and Ahmedabad. These signals were then retransmitted at 860 MHz by the satellite. This signal was directly received in 2000 villages by community television receivers with 10-ft parabolic antennas. Regular television stations also received the signals and broadcast them to another 3000 villages in the standard VHF television band. The television signal had two audio channels with different dialects.^[5]

[edit] Village selection

As the broadcasting time was limited, it was decided that the direct reception receivers would only be installed in 2400 villages spread across the country in 6 areas. Thus, SITE was launched in 20 districts covering six states of India — Rajasthan, Bihar, Orissa, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka. The villages for the experiment were chosen specifically for their backwardness by a computer program designed by ISRO. This was done to study the potential of TV as a medium for development.

According to the 1971 census, the most backward states in India were Orissa, Bihar, Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal and Karnataka. Finally, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal were left out as these states were slated to get terrestrial television by the time SITE would end. Each state thus selected was called a cluster. Each cluster had 3-4 districts under it with close to 1000 villages in each district. Out of these around 400 villages were chosen for each cluster based on technical as well as social criteria.^[6] Most of the villages were not even electrified. Hence, television sets running on solar cells and batteries were specially designed by Indian engineers with help from NASA.^[3]

[edit] Programming

All India Radio had the main responsibility for programme generation. They were made in consultation with the government. Special committees on education, agriculture, health and family planning indicated their own programme priorities.

Two types of programmes were prepared for broadcasting — educational television (ETV) and instructional television (ITV). The ETV programmes were meant for school-children and focussed on interesting and creative educational programmes. The ITV programmes were meant for adult audiences, most of them illiterate. These covered incidents of national importance, improved practices in agriculture, health, hygiene, family planning and nutrition. The programmes were beamed for four hours daily in two transmissions. The targeted audience was categorised into four linguistic groups - Hindi, Oriya, Telugu and Kannada - and programmes were produced according to the language spoken in the area.^[7]

[edit] End of SITE

After the year was up, NASA shifted its ATS satellite away from India. There were demands from villagers and journalists to continue the revolutionary experiment, but these were in vain. Even Arthur C. Clarke, who had been presented with a SITE television set in Sri Lanka, pleaded with NASA to continue the experiment. But in the end, the SITE program came to an end in July 1976.^[3]

[edit] Evaluation

The social research and evaluation of SITE was done by the special SITE Research and Evaluation Cell under ISRO. The REC consisted of around 100 persons located at the REC headquarters in Ahmedabad, in each of the SITE clusters and also at the SITE studio in Bombay. The research design was finalized by the SITE Social Science Research Co-ordination Committee under the chairmanship of Dr. M. S. Gore, erstwhile Director of the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Bombay. Impact on primary school children was studied under a joint project involving ISRO and the NCERT. The overall evaluation design was divided into three stages. The fist stage, the formative or input research, was a detailed study of the potential audience. The second stage, process evaluation, was the evaluation carried out during the life-time of SITE. This evaluation provided information about the reaction of the villagers to different programmes. The third stage, the summative evaluation, involved a number of different studies to measure the impact of SITE. These included the Impact Survey (Adults) to measure the impact on adults, SITE Impact Survey Children (SIS-C) to measure the impact on school children, and the qualitative anthropology study to measure change brought by TV in rural structure at macro-level.^[8]

Besides the social evaluation, a technical evaluation was also carried out to help India develop future systems. Each major sub-system of the earth system were tested and evaluated. This was done using the spacecraft simulator from NASA, the Indian Ocean INTELSAT spacecraft and finally using the ATS-6 satellite before SITE was launched. All the components of the Direct Reception System including were thoroughly tested too. The TV set was tested by the British Aircraft Corporation. Even the 3 meter antenna was tested before arriving to a final design. Data on failure rates was collected and analysis of the first 1800 failures was carried out to help design future DRS systems.^[9]

[edit] Impact

The impact of the SITE transmissions was tremendous. For the entire year, hundreds and thousands of villagers gathered around the television set and watched the shows. The studies carried out concluded that the general interest and viewership was highest in the first few months of the program (200 to 600 people per TV) and then declined gradually (60 to 80 people per TV). This was caused due to several factors like faulty television equipment, failure in electricity supply, hardware defects and also due to the villagers' pre-occupation with domestic or agricultural work. But overall, the gain in the knowledge and attitude of the villagers was very high in the field of agriculture and family planning.^[10]

[edit] References

• (1981) Evaluation Report On Satellite Instructional Television Experiment (SITE). Planning Commission, India. Retrieved on 2006-12-04. 
• Chander, Romesh; Karnik, Kiran (1976). Planning for Satellite Broadcasting: The Indian Instructional TV experiment. UNESCO Press. ISBN 92-3-101 392-0. 
• Srinivasan, Raman (1997). "16: No Free Launch: Designing the Indian National Satellite", in Butrica, Andrew J.: Beyond The Ionosphere: Fifty Years of Satellite Communication. The NASA History Series. 

[edit] Notes