Prasar Bharati’s ambitious plan to garner better TRPs by engaging private production houses to generate content for Doordarshan has fallen flat on its face. The scrutiny and the evaluation committee, which examined the proposals of seven production houses for time slots on the national broadcaster, has found that none of the production houses are eligible for participating in the e-auction under the eligibility criteria, as prescribed in the request for proposal (RFP).
“As per the eligibility criteria as prescribed in the RFP none of the production houses have been found eligible for participating in the e-auction,” sources told this newspaper.
Only seven production houses had submitted their bids for the sale of prime time slots on DD-National. Sources stated that the scrutiny and the evaluation committee had examined the qualification bids of these production houses for the eligibility criteria as prescribed in the RFP.
It is believed that Doordarshan, despite having the largest terrestrial reach across the country, is likely to relax the eligibility criteria for production houses to seek private content.
The slot sale policy has proved to be a non-starter despite extending bid dates as it received only seven proposals. When asked about the alleged failure of the policy and future plans for revival of national broadcaster’s content, CEO Jawhar Sircar refused to comment.
This newspaper had last week reported that seven production houses had submitted proposals to participate in the slot sale process. The production houses are Balaji Telefilms, Cinevista, Keylight Productions, Optymistrix, Rash Productions, Contiloe Entertainment and Shakuntalam Telefilms. In all 11 slots were up for grabs on the national broadcaster.
This newspaper had on June 30 reported that the last date for submission of proposals has been revised to July 4 instead of June 27.
The dates were revised as the national broadcaster was unable to attract adequate number of producers and production houses to bid for the prime time slots on Doordarshan. The policy was cleared as it was felt that Doordarshan’s major hit series like Ramayana, Mahabharat, Hum Log, Buniyaad and Chandrakanta were produced through the slot sale method.
The Prasar Bharati’s plans to attract more production houses to the process did not receive any boost despite its decision to introduce a one time amnesty scheme for blacklisted production houses and producers. All blacklisted firms were allowed to take part in the slot sale for prime time as long as they clear their dues with Prasar Bharati within 90 days.
The slot sale policy aims to generate revenue through advertisement time as well as the guarantee money pledged by the producer of the programme.
Eligibility criteria The production house should be registered under Companies Act 1956/2013 and should be in existence at least for the last 3 financial years. It must have produced, for any Broadcaster(s), at least 300 hours of Hindi general entertainment programming in the last two calendar years. * It should have a turnover of at least '5 crore per annum in each of the last 3 financial years. It should not be a defaulter of Doordarshan at thetime of submission of the bid. The bidder should not have been blacklisted by Central/state government or a PSU
