Cross-border Television Transmission and Viewership in the Pre-Cable Times: Tracing the Legacy of Doordarshan and PTV in Shaping Collective Cultural Memory and Nostalgia in South Asia

There is extensive research on the ruptures produced by the partition of India. What, however, have to some extent evaded scholarly attention are the continuities transcending one of the world's most heavily militarized borders - cultural practices, historical legacies, shared heritage, folk traditions, languages, and collective memory. After 1947, media exchanges across the Indo-Pakistan border continued, primarily through radio and cinema in the early decades. While the latter was repeatedly subjected to bans due to growing geopolitical rift, by the 1980s, television viewing emerged in India and Pakistan as a collective ritual and medium of cultural exchange between citizens of the two nations, amidst lingering political hostility and border tensions. Doordarshan (DD) and Pakistan Television Corporation (PTV) in the 1980s were not only the sole providers of television in their respective home countries but also transcended the Radcliffe Line through terrestrial signals and bootlegged tapes. This research examines the terrestrial footprints of DD and PTV across the Indo-Pakistan border, running through Punjab, and documents their cross-border viewership. It studies the legacies of Doordarshan and PTV as part of the collective memory of a whole generation of Indian and Pakistani audiences through the frameworks of Nostalgia, Media Studies, and Television Studies.