DD Direct Plus removed two channels (Mega TV and Kairali TV) from its platform.  Now Mega TV is replaced with Test 410 and it is showing DD National channel. Kairali TV is replaced with Test 502 and it is showing color bars.

For latest discussions related to DD Direct Plus, please check our forum from the below link.

http://indiandth.in/Forum-DD-Direct

Prasar Bharati (PB) has clarified that the Mail Today story – ‘Scam stink as DD to hire DTH it could have bought’ published on Monday – was “factually incorrect, conjectural, malicious and defamatory”.

PB board officer on special duty (OSD), Dhiranjan Malvey said in his written rebuttal that the broadcaster decided to hire facilities for increasing the capacity of Doordarshan’s DTH platform to 150 channels as it would not be possible to procure equipment and make it functional within a time-frame.

The PB official said under the 11th five-year plan, the government had allocated an amount to upgrade the free DTH facility on Doordarshan by increasing the number of channels offered from 59 to 97. While contending that increasing the capacity to 97 would not have served the “larger public purpose”, Malvey pointed out that it was not a Cabinet decision.

He said: “For each month that the channel capacity augmentation is delayed, PB would lose more than Rs. 22 crore and the public would be forced to subscribe to the pay platform.”

The OSD also raised an objection to the figure of Rs. 200 crore mentioned in the story.

The amount was meant to underline the fact that hiring of DTH facilities would cost much more than the Rs. 75.43 crore allocated by the government, including to acquire the enhanced assets and pay the salary of extra employees. PB clarified that the figure was conjectural as it would earn revenue to the tune of Rs. 1,350 crore. Malvey said the board’s decision on upgrading the DTH platform was unanimous and member finance A.K. Jain as well as member personnel Shiva Kumar had also approved the move. Furthermore, Malvey, in his letter, objected to an “adverse comment” in the story regarding the procurement of HD camcorders by PB through the propriety article certificate (PAC) route.

He said a high-level committee approved it after evaluating “HD recording systems offered by Sony, Panasonic, Thomson, Grass Valley, JVC and Ikegami”. Since the camcorders were meant to be propriety in nature, the PAC route was taken, he claimed.

He said the story gave the impression that the employees who objected to the decision were punished by being transferred. PB claimed that more than 125 employees were shunted out for administrative reasons, including union officebearers who were with it for more than eight years.

YATISH YADAV REPLIES

I stand by the story, which was sourced from government documents and verified by officials of Prasar Bharati. The denial by PB is nothing but a play of words and cites notional figures that have not been backed by material evidence.

In fact, the news report carried a detailed version of officiating CEO Rajiv Takru on the serious allegations levelled against the public broadcaster’s controversial decisions on the DTH platform of Doordarshan and the purchase of HD camcorders without a tender.

In his clarification also, Malvey accepts the basic fact mentioned in the story that the PB board took a view overruling the Union government’s decision of acquiring equipment and other facilities to upgrade the DTH platform.

For the upgrade, the government had earmarked a budget of Rs. 75.43 crore under the 11th plan which was to be used in three years, beginning 2010.

Malvey says the Cabinet did not okay the DTH upgrade, but the I&B ministry – through an August 17, 2010, letter addressed to the PB giving the government direction on the 11th plan scheme allocation – clearly asked the broadcaster to give a monthly report on the implementation of the issue to the Cabinet secretariat through the ministry. This was stated in the news report along with Takru’s response that the government and Cabinet were intimated about the board’s decision.

The PB board OSD has also come up with a hypothetical proposition that the broadcaster would lose Rs. 22 crore every month for the delay in augmentation of channel capacity.

Strangely, the agenda paper of the PB board meeting, held on June 7, 2011, is silent on the technology and financial justification for hiring equipment.

Besides, such an explanation was not given to the reporter, who had sought a point-by-point response for the story. PB questioned the figure of the likely loss owing to the broadcaster’s hiring of facilities that was quoted in the story.

It, however, failed to give an account of how much it would cost to hire the DTH platform.

This indicates that PB itself is not sure about the matter and the clarification conveniently only divulges that it is preparing an RFP to hire equipment that would be absorbed by the broadcaster. Otherwise, too, the story had Takru’s version, saying that the loss figure quoted was without any basis.

On the OSD’s contention that the board’s decision was unanimous, I stand by the fact that A.K. Jain and Shiva Kumar had not endorsed the hiring proposal as they found it a bad financial decision and had communicated their objections to seniors.

Malvey, in his letter, has also objected to the “adverse comment” in the story regarding the procurement of HD camcorders by PB through the PAC route. Significantly, Malvey himself had struck a note of caution against the purchase in a file noting on the subject on June 24.

The file noting, carrying Malvey’s signature, clearly questions the decision on several counts, including on buying camcorders directly from Sun Broadcast Equipment Pvt Ltd. Malvey recorded his comment by saying that the broadcaster should have instead bought camcorders directly from the country representatives of Sony.

Surprisingly, CEO Takru held a meeting on pending proposals, in his chamber on June 10 this year, where the HD camcorder issue was also taken up.

On the transfer of employees, the charge is based on the reporter’s interview with a number of union leaders. Here, too, the reporter has played it fair by incorporating the officiating CEO’s version in the story.

Source: IndiaToday

After the disgraceful exit of former Prasar Bharati CEO B. S. Lalli over hiring of equipment during the Commonwealth Games (CWG), another outsourcing scam appears to be brewing in the corridors of Mandi House.

The Prasar Bharati board, under its officiating CEO Rajiv Takru, has allegedly pushed through a proposal that violates a decision of the Union cabinet on the expansion plan for Doordarshan’s direct-to-home (DTH) service.

The 11-member Prasar Bharati board gave a go-ahead to the proposal on May 13 this year to outsource the entire operation to private players despite the government allocating funds for the purchase and maintenance of equipment and staff salary.

In August 2010, the central government had approved the expansion plan of the existing DTH facility available on DD Plus by increasing the number of channels offered in the bouquet from 59 to 97.

For this purpose, it had approved Rs. 75.43 crore under the 11th Plan. Out of this allocation, Rs. 44.96 crore was earmarked for enhancing the DTH platform, including procurement of equipment, and Rs. 3.47 crore was meant for maintenance costs and staff salary.

The government communicated its decision to Prasar Bharati on August 17, 2010, that the work implementation progress report should be furnished on a monthly basis to the information and broadcasting (I and B) ministry, which would forward it to the cabinet secretariat.

In a letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and I& B minister Ambika Soni, the National Federation of Akashvani and Doordarshan Employees (NFADE) has questioned Takru’s motive to push the scandalous decision through the board. “We really fail to understand that when all the equipment can be procured as a one-time capital investment of about Rs. 100 crore… why is the officiating CEO of Prasar Bharati board insisting on paying huge amounts as rent to our rival companies for operating the system from our own office complex with all facilities,” NFADE chairman Anilkumar S. wrote in the letter.

Takru conceded Prasar Bharati was not utilising the scheme’s funds for creating DD’s own enhanced DTH infrastructure. He, however, said the scheme fund would be utilised for some other project and the government had been intimated about it.

“Since no procurement is happening in Prasar Bharati because of certain reasons, the board had unanimously decided to hire the DTH facility from private players to avoid delay. We will generate money to pay the hiring cost for DTH services. The government and the cabinet have been intimated about it,” the officiating CEO said.

Takru, on the contrary, claimed that some people with vested interest were opposing this move since hiring will be transparent and there will no scope of wrongdoing. He also said that procurement by Prasar Bharati had been minimal this year.

A senior official of the ministry said Takru had recommended floating a tender for outsourcing the DTH services to private players. It has already been prepared and vetted by the legal department, he added.

“Hiring of such facilities will cost the government approximately Rs. 200 crore in the next five years, which is much more than the investment needed to own the infrastructure. So, every year Prasar Bharati will spend crores of taxpayers’ money on rent,” the official added.

Takru, however, said such figures were without any basis as they had not finalised the deal with any party as of now.

Sunil Kapur, one of the members of the empowered committee, said he had refused to sign any proposal in the only meeting he attended so far.

Kapur could not recall when the meeting took place or the panel’s agenda.

“For the last six months, I have not been able to attend any meeting because of my ill health. I’m aware of certain controversies surrounding the empowered committee but since I’m not attending any meeting these days, I would not be able to say much on the DTH issue,” Kapur said.

In the past, a similar decision taken by former CEO Lalli to outsource and hire equipment caused huge losses to the exchequer. Lalli was indicted by the Shunglu committee, established to probe the CWG mess, for this move and he is also facing a CBI probe.

In other irregularities, the board had also approved and recommended procurement of HD camcorders on the basis of propriety article certificate ( PAC) – a technical term used to pre-decide a particular brand – from Sun broadcast equipment at a cost of Rs. 58 crore without calling for tenders. The decision was taken violating financial rules of the board, which states that high- value purchases should be done through the tender process, avoiding the PAC route. The Central Vigilance Commission is also against purchases done without inviting bid.

Sources said the I& B minister was apprised of the arbitrary decisions and she is said to be contemplating action.

Source: IndiaToday.in

New Delhi: In what would be a first for a public service broadcaster anywhere in the world, Prasar Bharati is set to outsource the operational and technical management of its free-to-air direct-to-home (DTH) service DD Direct+ to private DTH operators like Dish TV, Tata Sky and others based on a tendering process.

Sources said Doordarshan will float a request for proposal (RFP) this week which will invite eligible private DTH and teleport operators to take over the operational command and control of DD Direct+ for the next five years for a fixed monthly fee.

The move, according to DD officials, is aimed at cutting costs and maximising the revenue of DD Direct+, especially when it is gearing up to boost its channel capacity from 59 to 200 and beyond in 6-8 months. “Why should government officials manage DTH services at a higher cost when private agencies can do it more efficiently,” an official said, justifying the need to involve private agencies to run DD Direct+.

Doordarshan spends R35-40 crore every year to operate 59 channels on DD Direct+ (including 22 DD channels) whereas private operators manage over 230 channels on their respective DTH platforms at nearly half the cost (on a per channel basis), sources said. Under the proposed arrangement, private operators will manage the entire technical back-end of DD Direct+ including uplink and downlink of channels, quality control, expansion and subscriber management, among others.

In order to attract only serious private players, Doordarshan will keep the networth requirement for bidders at R200 crore, which means only DTH firms like Dish TV, Tata Sky, Digital TV, Sun Direct and others can qualify. Among teleport operators, Essel Shyam and HFCL, among others, are said to have a net worth above R200 crore.

Private firms can bid as a company or a consortium, DD officials told FE. “Any DTH or teleport operator which has an experience of operating a minimum of 30 channels on MPEG-2 technology and having a net worth of R200 crore will be eligible. It will be a two-stage closed tender process and the RFP will be issued within the week,” a senior Prasar Bharati official told FE.

This is not the first time private firms have associated with DD Direct+, which recently adopted electronic auctions as the mode for allocating space to private channels. Two rounds of e-auctions have successfully been conducted by a Mumbai-based private auctioning agency.

The e-auctions for 26 slots generated record revenues of R63 crore from private broadcasters. This is more than thrice what it used to generate before migrating to e-auction mechanism two months ago, charging Rs 80 lakh/slot.

Source: The Financial Express

NEW DELHI: The Telecom Disputes Settlement and Appellate Tribunal (Tdsat) has said Prasar Bharati is ‘best equipped’ to decide which channel should form part of its DTH bouquet so as to attract viewers and at the same time discharge its duties under Section 12 of the Prasar Bharati Act.

This right of Prasar Bharati cannot be defeated for the petty commercial gains of any channels, Tdsat said, disposing off two similar petitions.

Justice SB Sinha, Chairperson, and members GD Gaiha and PK Rastogi also said that it was for Prasar Bharati to take a decision as to which channel is to be carried on its DD Direct Plus platform in accordance with its guidelines.

“We had already directed Prasar Bharati in our judgment of 16 December 2010 to take a policy decision at the highest level with regard to allotment or refusal of new channel.” This judgment was passed by the Tribunal on petitions filed by certain channels, which were removed/sought to be removed in October 2010.

Tdsat, thus, rejected a petition by Music India channel, owned by Media Worldwide, challenging its removal from Doordarshan’s DTH platform DD Direct Plus on 18 October last year.

However in the other petition relating to the Pragya lifestyle channel run by Pragya Vision, the Tdsat said after considering the arguments that “we are of the opinion that Prasar Bharati should take a decision as early as possible about the request of Pragya in accordance with its own guidelines”.

Music World had been applying to be on the free-to-air DD Direct Plus since 2006 but it was only from 3 October 2007 that it got a placement on the channel on payment of a carriage fee of Rs 2.5 million. Later on 1 August 2008, Prasar Bharati reminded the channel that its agreement was coming to an end and sought an increased fee of Rs 6 million plus service tax at 12.36 per cent and this extension was given. Prasar Bharati also agreed on 21.January 2010 to continue the agreement for 2009-10.

The channel has claimed that even as it was awaiting a letter from Prasar Bharati for continuing the agreement for 2010-11, the pubcaster without any intimation disconnected the channel from 18 October 2010.

The Tribunal said Music India can’t claim right of renewal when he did not show any interest or willingness to continue their relationship by executing a fresh agreement with Prasar Bharati.

Prasar Bharati is not obliged to follow clause 8.1 of the Interconnect Regulation without the channel fulfilling its own obligation, it added.

Under Clause 4.2 relating to disconnection of TV signals by the distributors, the Tribunal held that this notice is necessary during the currency of the agreement and not after the completion of the period of the agreement. At the most, consumers may approach this Tribunal and agitate about their rights and obligations but the channel cannot claim right of renewal when he has not shown any interest or willingness to continue their relationship by executing a fresh agreement with the respondent.

During the arguments, Prasar Bharati submitted that it had limited transponder capacity and as on date also there were more than 97 pending applications from various channels for being carried on the DTH platform. The media industry is a highly dynamic industry where change is the order and Prasar Bharati had to come with the channels mix up of various genres catering to various state of society, regions etc.

After the removal of the channel “Music India” from the DTH platform, another channel by name of India Newswas taken on the DD Direct Plus with effect from 22 October 2010 and this was on DD Direct Plus till June 2010. However, in view of the Commonwealth Games and the starting of HDTV transmission, additional bandwidth was required and for that purpose “India News” and another channel “News 24” were removed from DD Direct Plus.

On discontinuation of two channels “Music India” and “Care World”, two other channels “India News” and “Pragya” were taken on DD Direct Plus.

Prasar Bharati submitted before the Tribunal that there is no slot available on which “Music India” can be accommodated. For accommodating “Music India” one of the existing channels has to be removed from the DTH platform.

The pubcaster also argued that in the judgment of 16 December 2010 passed by the Tribunal, there was specific direction to restore the channel “Care World”, and so “Pragya” was removed.

The DTH Core Committee of Prasar Bharati, which met on 20 October 2010, decided to remove Music India and other channels from DD platform on completion of their present term and bring two channels, India News and Pragya on their platform.

In its petition, Pragya had challenged the termination of lease granted to it. Pragya had been on the wait-list for allotment since 2009 and it was only in November 2010 that Prasar Bharati agreed to carry Pragya on DD Direct Plus. The Petitioner paid Rs. 8 million as carriage fee and
Rs 8,24,000 on account of service tax.

Prasar Bharati in its letter on 1 December 2010 informed Pragya for the first time that one Seven Star (Care World) TV Channel had been removed from DD Direct Plus after expiry of its Agreement with the Corporation but that Seven Star had appealed in Tdsat to retain its channel on DD Direct Plus. Prasar Bharati also told Pragya that its continuation was subject to the outcome of this case.

Pragya was finally told on 29 December 2010 that it had been discontinued on DD Direct Plus by replacing Care World pursuant to the Judgment of 16 December 2010.

The Tribunal said it had been ‘fully conscious’ of this and had taken care to protect the interest of Pragya and specifically recorded that it did not think it necessary to implead Pragya as a party in those proceedings because there were vacant slots available on DTH Platform of DD Direct Plus.

Therefore, the Tribunal felt that the act of Prasar Bharati of terminating the Lease is in direct violation of this Tribunal’s judgment of December 2010.

The Tribunal has also noted that one of the channels, “Lokmat”, has fallen vacant but sought restoration within a week. “‘We would not like to go into details of these aspects. It is for the respondent to take a decision as to which channel is to be carried on its platform in accordance with its guidelines,” Tdsat said.

Source: Indiantelevision.com

Prasar Bharti conducted an e-auction to award slots to private channels on its Direct-to-home (DTH) serviceDD Direct Plus on Thursday. The public broadcaster expects to earn more than Rs 46 crore as revenues from this process.

“Through the auction, 21 successful bids have been received ranging from Rs 2.17 crore to Rs 2.25 crore. All 21 vacant slots on DD’sDTH platform have been auctioned through this e-auction process,” it said in a statement. The minimum bid amount for the auction was fixed at Rs 1.5 crore.

Prior to this e-auction process, Prasar Bharti was earning Rs.80 lakhs per channel adding up to Rs 16.8 crore from private broadcasters available on its DTH platform.

Currently , DD Direct plus offers 59 channels to its subscribers which includes 19 DD channels.

Source: The Economic Times

NEW DELHI: Employees of Prasar Bharati held a protest meeting to protest the decision of the Board to what they term outsourcing of the direct-to-home platform DD Direct Plus, outside broadcast of cricket on Doordarshan and All India Radio, and procurement and projects under the strategy for New Year.

The National Federation of Akashvani and Doordarshan Employees (NFADE) chairman Anilkumar S told indiantelevision.com that if employees remained silent, both All India Radio and Doordarshan would be sold out to private agencies.

However, DD sources said there was no plan to outsource DD Direct Plus and the e-auction will be completely transparent.

As a first step, the NFADE resorted to a gate meeting at the Akashvani Bhavan in Parliament Street. This will be followed by similar action at all Kendras across the country on 27 July.

Emphasizing that the proposed amendment to the Prasar Bharati (Broadcasting Corporation of India) Act 1990 would not help the broadcaster or its employees, Anilkumar reiterated the stand of the NFADE for repeal of the Act as it did not have any relevance in a scenario where there were over 700 TV channels in the country.

Earlier in a letter to Prasar Bharati Board Chairperson Mrinal Pande in March, Anilkumar and other office bearers expressed happiness that “the Board and the Government finally agrees that the concept of Prasar Bharati is irrelevant/redundant and DD and AIR should be governed directly by the government by repealing the Prasar Bharati Act 1990″.

The letter had been sent on the basis of a newspaper report that the Information and Broadcasting Ministry had asked the Board to reverse its order of selections for the posts of DG for Doordarshan, thus placing Tripurari Sharan at the top, and putting Leeladhar Mandloi (currently holding additional charge as DG of DD) at the top spot for AIR DG, though the Board had put his name at number three in its selection.

Source: Indiantelevision.com

New Delhi: Hoping to leverage their experience of conducting e-auctions for coal blocks, minerals and precious metals, around half a dozen public sector entities are now in the race to bag the Prasar Bharati contract for conducting the first-ever e-auctions for TV channel slots on the DD Direct Plus DTH platform. The move to e-auction TV channel slots is in line with the government’s vision of allocating scarce natural resources via a transparent auctioning mechanism.

Responding to the tender floated by Prasar Bharati last month, e-auction specialists like MMTC, Telecommunications Consultants India Ltd (TCIL), mjunction services ltd (50:50 JV between SAIL and Tata Steel) and the State Trading Corporation among others have applied. The contract is expected to be awarded within a day or two, sources in Prasar Bharati said.

As first reported by FE in May, Prasar Bharati will auction 200 channel slots this year on its free-to-air DTH platform to the highest bidder for a duration of one year. DD Direct Plus has a subscriber base of 8-9 million and that is why it is preferred by private broadcasters who can then ask advertisers for better spot rates.

As opposed to DD Direct Plus, the half a dozen private DTH operators tend to charge a minimum of R2.5-3 crore of annual carriage fee to accommodate channels, making it an expensive proposition for many broadcasters.

For the coming e-auctions, Prasar Bharati has fixed the minimum reserve price of R1.5 crore per channel slot (up from the R60 lakh per channel annual carriage fee earlier). It hopes to generate at least R400 crore in revenues from the yearly auctions, thereby becoming financially independent. Currently, the information and broadcasting ministry allocates funds under the Plan and non-Plan support to meet the operational and capital expenditure of the public broadcaster.

“The e-auctions are scheduled for later this month or early August. The shortlisting of channels is already in the final stages,” a senior official in Prasar Bharati said. In the first stage of e-auctions, around 15-18 slots on DD Direct Plus will be put out for bidders. The next auction for 175-180 channels will happen in December, sources in Doordarshan told FE.

Already, Prasar Bharati has received applications from 30-35 free-to-air channels which are interested to participate in the bidding process by agreeing to pay the minimum reserve price of R1.5 crore per channel. “The response from channels has been good,” the official said.

However, in the latest e-auctions, only Indian broadcasters will be allowed to participate as the policy for allowing foreign broadcasters is still under works, sources said.

Source: The Financial Express

The Prasar Bharati board will soon go for the one-time out-of-court settlement of all the outstanding arbitration cases of Doordarshan (DD) in the last 10 years or so. “DD has been involved in various arbitration cases with various entities. On July 14, 15, and 16, there will be an open house in Mumbai where all arbitration cases will be sought to be resolved under a single roof in an one-time settlement effort,” a government official told HT.

The total monetary value of the outstanding arbitration cases for the state broadcaster stands at about Rs 400 crore.

“All proceedings will be conducted in public so there is total transparency. All cases will be decided on merit,” he said.

“Arbitration cases make no sense and benefits no one. It leads to a lot of secondary problems. When we have a difficult arbitration situation with any producer, he or she is blacklisted, so there is a possibility of losing out a wider range of choices on content and quality. In effect, we want to open the gates for more and more producers.”

The government effort is part of a wide-ranging policy to improve quality and content in Doordarshan and All India Radio (AIR) which has been the subject of scathing criticism. Prasar Bharati is the statutory autonomous body that controls DD and AIR.

The government has also decided to take the e-auction route for channel carriage on the expanded DD Direct-To-home (DTH) satellite platform. The number of channels will increase to 200 from existing 54.

“The e-auction for broadcasters who wish to use DD’s DTH platform will be held in this month. We hope to complete the process by December 31, 2011,” the official said.

With the expansion, the national broadcaster is expected to turn out to be an attractive proposition for customers because of its reach and low carriage rates.

Source: Hindustan Times

NEW DELHI: As the government clearance is yet to come for boosting the capacity of DD Direct Plus, the pubcaster has issued disconnection notices to seven channels to make place for the high definition (HD) channels that were launched to coincide with the Commonwealth Games.

The country’s only free-to-air DTH platform has a capacity of 59 channels while it beams 57 TV channels, apart from 21 channels of All India Radio. The TV channels include 21 Doordarshan channels.

Meanwhile, the Telecom Disputes Settlement and Appellate Tribunal (Tdsat) will hear on 9 December a plea by Zee Turner, owner of Zee Cinema, challenging the disconnection notice.

Zee Turner has submitted before Tdsat that the state-owned direct to home (DTH) service provider Prasar Bharati has threatened not to carry its channel but has not given the mandatory 21 days time.

Prasar Bharati has issued notices threatening to disconnect carriage signals of Zee Smile, Zee Jagran and ETC Music– all Zee Turner channels– from 28 November.

Senior counsel Maninder Singh appearing for Zee Turner submitted that Prasar Bharati has threatened to stop transmission of its channels though it has paid Rs 8 million as enhanced annual carriage charges. He also sought directions to Prasar Bharati for carrying Zee Turner’s channel on the DTH service on non-discriminatory basis.

DD sources told indiantelevision.com that DD Direct Plus could consider taking back these channels as soon as it is able to augment its capacity to 97 channels in the first phase.

The augmentation of the capacity of DD Direct Plus will cost Rs 554.3 million as part of the 11th Plan scheme. According to the budget approved on 4 August 2010, the augmentation in the first phase will be completed by 31 March 2011.

According to Information and Broadcasting Minister sources, the capacity will increase to 200 by the end of financial year 2011-12.

Earlier, Doordarshan Director General Aruna Sharma told indiantelevision.com that DD was just awaiting the clearance as it was ready with the infrastructure
.

DD sources said around 90 television channels by 82 applicants are in the queue for being uploaded on DD Direct Plus. These include some foreign channels.

The oldest of these applications was made on 7 March 2007 while the latest was made on 12 April this year.

Being an FTA channel, DD Direct only has a one-time charge for dish antennae, set top box and installation.

The country has six private platforms that are operational – Dish TV, Tata Sky, Big TV, Sun Direct, Airtel digital TV and Videocon D2H.

Source: Indiantelevision.com