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Prasar Bharati to popularise Metro Channel, once again

Prasar Bharati Corporation has ambitious plans to make Doordarshan’s Metro Channel popular once again. In a bid to increase its viewership and revenue, the channel’s reach is being expanded terrestrially.

Prasar Bharati CEO Rajiv Ratan Shah, while talking to few journalists, informed that during the next three months, 30 transmitters (20 high power transmitters and 10 low power transmitters) will be added to DD2 network and with these, Metro Channel coverage is expected to become available to about 35 per cent population of the country.

For further expansion of DD2 coverage, Prasar Bharati Corporation has proposed to install 24 transmitters in about a year’s time. With the commissioning of these transmitters, Metro Channel coverage is expected to be available to about 40 per cent population of the country.

But according to Shah, auctioning of DD Metro’s time slot, is one good step to prevent the revenue from slipping any further. He informed that Doordarshan has decided to introduce a new scheme of bulk air time sale of 30 minutes slots.

The new scheme will be put in to practice from August 1, with four half hour slot between 7 pm and 9 pm being auctioned away to the highest bidder for a year.

The floor prices have been fixed at Rs 10 crore from 7 pm to 7.30 pm, Rs 12.50 crore till 8 pm, Rs 15 crore till 8.30 pm and Rs 17.5 crore till 9 pm. Successful bidders will have 300 seconds of Free Commercial Time per fay at each slot. These slots are expected to yield a revenue of Rs 55 crore during 1999-2000.

When asked about the possibility of one party getting more than one slot or anyone getting two adjacent slots and converting it into one single hour long programme, Shah did not rule out the possibility. How could one prevent two sister companies from applying for the same slot? It becomes very difficult to check them," Shah said.

Talking about the genre of programming, he informed that between 7 pm and 8 pm, quiz shows, game shows, chat shows, fashion shows, film and album based programme, western music, adolescent and youth programmes will be aired.

Between 8 pm and 9 pm, family serials, daily soaps, sitcoms, comedies, music shows, suspense serials, film-based shows and countdown shows will be aired.

He said that only one film-based programme will be permitted in an entire week on any single band, which means there could be maximum of only four film based programmes throughout the week. Only bids from producers having experience of 200 hours of programme production will be entertained. The officer will have to quote a bid for one full year for each time slot. Same programme will not be allowed to telecast on any other channel at least for six months after the telecast of the last episode of the serial on DD Metro.

Shah also informed that from the first week of August, there will be a total revam-p of the channel, as far as its programming is concerned. For quality control of the programmes to be aired on the auctioned slots, DD will have its own mechanism.

Pilot episode is to be submitted in all cases. Doordarshan will have the rights of cancellation of the contract if the serial/ programme becomes boring.

"But if a person is paying Rs 10 crore to DD, he cannot afford to make his programme unpopular," Shah said.

DD may introduce a system of Exec-utive Producer being attached to a production, as is the case with satellite channel.
Shah also informed that 5 pm to 7 pm time slots were being developed as children’s band and would be in Hindi, while care will be taken to see that the programming on the remaining slots don’t clash with DD’s main channels.

While reacting to the recent charges made by Arun Aggrawal, a former financial advisor of the Prasar Bharati Corporation, that ICC President Jagmohan Dalmiya and World Tel’s Mark Mascarenhas had cheated Doordarshan of 4 million dollars over the telecast rights for ICC tournament in Dhaka two years ago, Shah said. "Aggrawal is no longer a Prasar Bharati employee and he must face the consequences as an individual person."

He also said that whatever Aggrawal had said was his personal opinion. "His report was deliberated upon and had been sent to Comptroller and Auction General (CAG). We did take his report seriously. As a fallout of his report, we disbanded the sports consortium in June 1999. We also plan to set up our own marketing division," he further informed.

But Shah said that Prasar Bharati has not derecognised any individual attached to disbanded sports consortium and company like Stracon is still doing business with DD.

Amitabh Parashar