Kerala’s First Bell classes garner 15 cr views, ad revenue in lakhs

Thiruvananthapuram, July 26 (IANS) The First Bell classes streamed online or broadcast on TV in Kerala have now crossed the 1,000 mark and garnered 15 crore monthly views, apart from raking in Rs 15 lakh per month by way YouTube advertisement revenue from 141 countries, an official said on Sunday.

The initiative by the Kerala Education Department was taken through the KITE or Kerala Infrastructure and Technology for Education’s VICTERS educational channel.

K Anvar Sadath, CEO of KITE, said that in addition to the viewership of classes through the channel mode, the web-streaming platform has also seen tremendous response, which is evident from that fact that as many as 442 Terabytes of data has been reported from 141 countries.

“The monthly views of the YouTube channel total 150 million (15 crore). The average daily viewership of classes on YouTube alone is 54 lakh, which translates to a whopping 5 lakh hours a day. Despite limited advertisements, the revenue from this stands at an average Rs 15 lakh per month. The classes are also broadcasted through Facebook Live on the Facebook page of the channel,” said Sadath.

This initiative was launched on June 1 as an interim arrangement (and not as alternate class) as state schools were forced to close due to Covid-19 pandemic. This unique initiative has ensured that not even one student misses out on any class.

“Through the First Bell programme, 604 classes were aired through KITE VICTERS channel apart from 274 classes in Kannada and 163 in Tamil telecast through local cable networks in the state,” added Sadath.

Though public movement has been restricted at a number of places in the state due to Covid-19 pandemic, which impact preparation of classes. To tackle this problem, KITE has made arrangements for production of classes for broadcast in different districts.

He added that Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality are being used to the extent possible, which would be expanded in due course.

The schools would make use of free software applications to develop the classes to be aired through KITE VICTERS channel.

“New classes of general nature, beyond subjects and including sports, will be ready from August onwards,” added Sadath.

–IANS

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