Free Dish: News channels bag slots at almost half the price as Big 4 pull out Hindi GECs

The exit of Hindi GECs owned by the four big networks from DD Free Dish has ended up benefiting the news channels. On Day 2 of the DD Free Dish e-auction, five news channels have won slots for almost 40-50% lesser price as compared to the previous year's annual e-auction.

In Bucket C, News Nation emerged as the highest bidder with a bid of Rs 10.05 crore followed by Zee News at Rs 10 crore. Times Now Navbharat and Republic Bharat paid Rs 9.95 crore each. ABP News paid Rs 9.8 crore.

These numbers are a far cry from the mind-boggling sums that the news channels had paid in the 2021 annual e-auctions. While News Nation had bid Rs 18.55 crore for a slot, Zee News had offered Rs 16 crore to bag a slot. Republic Bharat's last bid was an astounding Rs 21.15 crore and ABP News had offered Rs 16.05 crore for a slot on the platform.

All in all, the news and current affairs channels that come under Bucket C had bid a whopping Rs 190.3 crore for 11 slots. This time around, the total bids by the five news channels barely touched Rs 50 crore.

Industry watchers say that the pullout of channels like Star Utsav, Zee Anmol, Colors Rishtey, and Sony Pal will also benefit news channels in the form of more slots being allotted to Bucket C.

After two days of auction, DD Free Dish has collected Rs 323.15 crore from the auction of 27 slots across A+, A, B, C, D and R1 buckets.

The biggest surprise of the auction has been the bid put up by devotional channels like Sadhana Bhakti/Vedic, Sanskar, and Aastha. The three channels have collectively paid Rs 50 crore for three slots in the R1 bucket. Sadhana Bhakti/Vedic has bid an eye-popping Rs 20 crore followed by Sanskar (Rs 15.1 crore), and Aastha (Rs 14.9 crore).

As reported earlier, Shemaroo TV, The Q, Enterr10, Dangal, and Abzy Cool have won slots under Bucket A+. The slot winners in Bucket A include Manoranjan TV, B4U Kadak, B4U Movies, Abzy Movie, and Movie Plus.

The public broadcaster is believed to have mopped up over Rs 75 crore from Bucket A+ category that is reserved for Hindi GECs. It has collected close to Rs 65 crore from the Bucket A category that comprises Hindi movie channels. Bucket A+ and Bucket A have reserve prices of Rs 15 crore and Rs 12 crore, respectively.

Under Bucket B, which comprises Hindi music, sports, Bhojpuri GEC, Movie and Teleshopping channels, five slots were allotted on Wednesday. B4U Music, B4U Bhojpuri, Zee Ganga, Bhojpuri Cinema and Zee Biskope bagged these slots. The category base price was Rs 10 crore.

In Bucket D, Sun Marathi, Popcorn Movies and Manoranjan Movies were the winners. Bucket D has a reserve price of Rs 6 crore.