Still no takers for Doordarshan’s content slots

Doordarshan’s second attempt at garnering new content for its channels through the slot sale policy — with relaxed norms for acquisition — has also seemingly failed to take off as just three production houses have submitted proposals for participating in the e-auction for its primetime slots.

Sources said that despite the Prasar Bharati board’s move to invite fresh proposals, after none of the private production houses were found eligible in the first attempt, the new relaxed norms haven’t elicited much response. Only three production houses — BAG Films, Balaji and Keylight — submitted proposals for participation in the e-auction, sources added.

It is learnt that the list of qualified bidders will be published online on August 30. The national broadcaster had relaxed norms for companies in an effort to generate content for Doordarshan. However, as this doesn’t seemed to have worked, it is now understood that the national broadcaster may have to entirely give up on the proposed content-generation idea.

Speaking to this newspaper, Doordarshan director-general Supriya Sahu said, “We are evaluating the proposals right now. We will decide further course of action only after the exercise is over.”

In its last meeting, the Prasar Bharati board had relaxed the requirement for the private production houses to have produced at least 300 hours of Hindi general entertainment programming to only 200 hours in the last two calendar years. Additionally, the requirement of turnover of at least '5 crore per annum in each of the last three financial years has also been relaxed to '3 crore.

The national broadcaster was unable to secure private production houses despite revising the last date for submission of proposals to 4 July from the earlier deadline of 27 June. The policy was cleared as it was felt that Doordarshan’s major hit shows, like Ramayana, Mahabharat, Hum Log, Buniyaad and Chandrakanta were produced through the slot sale method.

The slot sale method has proved to be a non starter despite Prasar Bharati’s decision to introduce a one time amnesty scheme for blacklisted production houses and producers.

Under the policy — cleared a few months ago by the Board — it was decided that Doordarshan would auction prime time slots, between 7-11 p.m. from Monday to Friday, on its national channel.

As per the new policy, producers would provide content in return for a share in the advertising revenue. Some hours for Saturdays and Sundays were also offered under the slot sale policy.