DD Free Dish, which currently
operates a total of 80 channels, is planning to add 24 new channels.
New Delhi: State
broadcaster Doordarshan’s free-to-air (FTA), direct-to-home (DTH) platform DD
Free Dish will auction eight vacant slots to private television channels in the
upcoming 27th e-auction slated for 30 May, according to two people associated
with the auction.
In the auction, private
broadcasters will bid for slots on Free Dish for their television channels. The
reserve price of each slot has been fixed at Rs.4.3 crore, the same as in the previous auction that took
place in February. The DTH operator had added nine channels in the 26th
auction.
DD Free Dish, which currently
operates a total of 80 channels on its platform, is planning to add 24 new
channels, increasing the number to 104 in the next three months.
According to the people mentioned
above, who did not want to be named, Doordarshan has not reserved any slot for
regional language channels.
“Doordarshan policy allows us to
reserve slots for regional channels once a year and we have already done that
in the previous auction,” said one of them. Doordarshan had reserved two slots
for regional channels in the last auction in which two Marathi language
channels were added.
The state broadcaster has also
increased the fee for foreign public broadcasters to operate their channels on
Free Dish from Rs.1.5 crore to Rs.3.5 crore. “Doordarshan currently has four foreign public
broadcasters. They don’t participate in the auction. They approach us and they
are given the space at a fixed price,” one of two people said.
The aforementioned four foreign
public broadcasters include Russian television network-run Russia Today,
Paris-based news and current affairs television channel France 24, Germany’s
international broadcaster DW TV Asia+ and Australian Broadcasting Corporation
(ABC+).
The other television broadcasters
on Free Dish include news channels like Aaj Tak, ABP news, News 24 and
entertainment channels like Star Utsav, Sony Pal, Viacom18’s Rishtey and
Rishtey Cineplex, among others. Free Dish has 25 Doordarshan channels,
including the official channels of Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha.
On 16 May, Prasar Bharati, which
runs Doordarshan and All India Radio, announced that it will auction its prime
time slots (between 7pm and 11pm). As part of this policy, private producers
will now be able to provide content in return for a share in the advertising
revenue
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