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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Forwarded by :Jainender Nigam PBNewsdesk , news.prasarbharati@gmail.com