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: 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

Bangalore, 23 November 2010: For the first time in 55 years radio waves fell silent across the State with the All India Radio going off air on Tuesday, when all the employees of AIR went on a strike seeking a repeal of the Prasar Bharathi Act, 1990.

As many as five radio channels, Akashvani Bangalore, Direct-to-Home (DTH), Vividh Bharathi and Amruthavarshini, a musical channel went off the air from 9 am.

In Bangalore, the usually bustling premises of the AIR witnessed a few employees discussing the future of India’s first radio channel that provided infotainment to citizens across the country. From folklore to educational programmes and from classical music to commercial programmes all went silent as the 250 personnel from the AIR station decided to join their counterparts in the 48-hour protest.

A V Vinod Kumar, a Programme Executive believed that this was the last and only option available with the Federations to ensure that streamlining of the workload in the AIR. “We have seen vacant posts for the past 15 years which were to be filled much earlier. The last batch of recruitment was 1994. With fewer and fewer employees it becomes increasingly tough for others to function,” he said.

Meanwhile, joining the cause were the Doordarshan (DD) employees who also went on strike in the State. However, DD Chandana officials said only the engineers went on strike in Bangalore and the rest of the staff discharged their duties.

Source: Bellevision.com

NEW DELHI: The augmentation of the capacity of the country’s only free direct-to-home platform DD Direct Plus to 97 channels will cost Rs 554.3 million.

The augmentation in the first phase will be completed on 31 March 2011.

The plan is to increase DD Direct Plus’ capacity to 200 by the end of the financial year 2011-12.

The platform currently has a capacity of 59 channels while it presently beams 57 TV channels, apart from 21 channels of All India Radio. The TV channels include 21 Doordarshan channels.

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 told indiantelevision.com that 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.

Apart from many other channels, some of the applicants include TV24, NE TV Group, Sakshi TV and Star News.

The channels include three foreign channels: Japan’s NHK TV, Korean Broadcasting Corporation and Deutsche Welle. Around ten more foreign channels are expected to join soon.

The annual carriage fee that broadcasters have to pay has also been lowered to just Rs 2.5 million from the earlier Rs 10 million, apart from a service tax of Rs 300,000. However, foreign broadcasters have to pay a carriage fee of Rs 5 million.

Being an FTA channel, DD Direct only has a one-time charge for dish antennae, set-top box and installation ranging between Rs 4,000 to Rs 8,000 depending on the brand chosen by the consumer.

The country has six private DTH platforms that are operational – Dish TV, Tata Sky, Big TV, Sun Direct, Airtel Digital TV and Videocon D2H. After the guidelines for DTH being issued on 15 March 2001, the sector has grown and at present has about 21.3 million subscribers.

Source: Indiantelevision.com

National broadcaster Doordarshan is seeking to strengthen its direct-to-home (DTH) platform – DD Direct Plus – and expects to have some 200 channels on its platform by end of the Eleventh Five-Year Plan or 2012.

At present, DD Direct Plus has a bouquet of 57 Free-to-Air (FTA) channels.

In the first phase by the end of 2010, DD Direct Plus aims to have about 100 FTA channels. In second phase, it is targeting 200 channels of which many will be FTA channels.

Currently, 31 of the 57 channels are from the DD stable.

Strong response

“We have an overwhelming response from private channels to get on to the DD Direct Plus platform. Even some of the pay channels are willing to go free,” said Ms Aruna Sharma, Director-General, Doordarshan.

“There’s a waitlist of 74 private channels seeking an entry to the DD Direct platform,” Ms Sharma said without disclosing their names. Some of the private channels such as Zee Smile, B4U Music and 9X are already on the DD Direct platform.

Subscription charge

Hinting at the possibility of DD Direct Plus starting to charge subscribers once it has over 100 channels, Ms Sharma said “pricing will depend on the policy at that point of time.” In the Fifth Plan, DD is investing about Rs 85 crore in strengthening the DD Direct platform.

The reach

Currently, DD Direct Plus reaches over six million homes, while the total subscriber base of private-sector players is expected to be around 18 million. An estimated two million DTH households were added in the October-December quarter.

DTH subscribers constitute a small portion of the overall television viewers in the country at present.

Analysts expect the DTH industry to grow at a compounded annual rate of 30 per cent by 2012. The overall television viewership in India is expected to grow to 132 million by 2012, up form 115 million.

Source: The Hindu Business Line

If you’re happy watching just the free to air (FTA) channels, you can indeed get them entirely free of cost by the end of the year. All you need do is install a set top box.

Currently, the various direct to home (DTH) service providers — Tata Sky, Dish TV, Reliance Big TV among others — offer various ‘bouquets’ of free and paid channels, which cost between Rs 80 to Rs 1,200 per month. With the new option Doordarshan is planning, you won’t have to pay anything at all.

Doordarshan has its own DTH service already, called DD Direct, and it is free, but it provides only 59 FTA channels, most of which are Doordarshan’s own. Now the government has told Prasar Bharati to prepare a proposal by which the number of FTA channels DD Direct provides increases to 200.

Doordarshan officials believe the move will be a game changer. “It will bring about the kind of change that occurred when the government decided incoming mobile phone calls should be free,” said a senior official.

At present DD Direct reaches 6 million homes, while private DTH operators cater to 14-16 million homes. Officials expect its reach to expand to 30 million homes within months of launching the new product.

The moot question is whether some pay channels will be willing to turn free to take advantage of the huge viewership DD Direct expects to offer, making up in advertising rates what they lose from subscriptions. Officials said they offered another incentive: the carriage fee — annual price of beaming a channel — Doordarshan charges is lower than private operators.

“If DD Direct can put together a good combination, it will have a good market,” said Uday Shankar, CEO Star India. “But I doubt pay channels will shift.”

Source: Hindustan Times