DD Free Dish: No show for MPEG-2 slots
Broadcasters, e4m has learnt, have found the base price exorbitant
Not a single broadcaster bid for the 79th e-auction of MPEG-2 slots of DD Free Dish held recently due to its steep pricing, sources told exchange4media on Thursday.
Broadcasters, e4m has learnt, found the base price exorbitant.
Public broadcaster Prasar Bharati had invited applications for the allotment of vacant MPEG-2 slots of DD Free Dish for the period - July 24, 2024 to March 31, 2025 – through the 79th online e-auction.
The e-auction was conducted in accordance with the e-auction methodology for allotment of DD Free Dish slots to private TV channels, notified by Prasar Bharati.
This is the second consecutive time that no one bid for the MPEG-2 slots of DD Free Dish. e4m had reported in May how the last DD Free Dish e-auction also saw no takers due to “unreasonable pricing”.
The public broadcaster categorised TV channels in different buckets in accordance with genres and language of the channel for the allotment period. Bucket A+ has GEC (Hindi/Urdu) channels, Bucket A hosts movie (Hindi/Urdu) channels. Bucket B is for music (Hindi/Urdu), sports (Hindi/Urdu), all channels of Bhojpuri language, and other remaining Hindi/Urdu genres.
Bucket C is for news and current affairs channels (Hindi/Urdu), while Bucket D is for devotional/spiritual/Ayush, all genres of Marathi and Punjabi channels, and news and current affairs channels (English).
Bucket R1 is for all channels in languages not covered in other buckets. The starting Reserve Price for the Round 1 (Bucket A+) is Rs 14,61,31,000, Round 2 (Bucket C) is Rs 13,03, 14,000; Round 3 (Bucket A) is Rs 12,58,44,000; Round 4 (Bucket D) is Rs 12,44,69,000; Round 5 (Bucket B) is Rs 12,37,81,000 and Round 6 (Bucket R1) is Rs 9,14,61,000.
The last date for submission of the applications was July 15th.
