DD Free Dish’s 77th e-auction for MPEG-2 slots found no takers with broadcasters citing the base price as too steep.
Sources told e4m that no participants turned up for the e-auction on May 28 due to the exorbitant base price. One broadcaster said, "The base price is too high; not everyone can afford such bids."
Prasar Bharati had invited applications for the period June 1, 2024, to March 31, 2025.
According to a broadcaster, “The base price is unreasonable."
The pubcaster has categorised TV channels in different buckets based on the genres/language of the channel for MPEG-2 auctions. The reserve price for Bucket A+, which comprises all GEC (Hindi/Urdu) channels is Rs 17.69 crore as compared to Rs 15 crore in the last auction that took place on February 19 for the period April 1, 2024, to March 31, 2025.
Bucket A, which includes all movie channels (Hindi/Urdu), has a reserve price of Rs 15.24 crore compared to Rs 12 crore in the last auction.
Bucket B, which comprises Music (Hindi) Channels, Sports (Hindi) Channels, and all channels of Bhojpuri language and all the other remaining genres has a reserve price of Rs 14.99 crore as compared to Rs 10 crore. The reserve price for the News & Current Affairs (Hindi/Urdu) category, which falls under Bucket C is Rs 15.78 crore. Meanwhile, Bucket C had a base price of Rs 7 crore.
The reserve price for Bucket D, which has devotional/ spiritual/ ayush/ all genres of Marathi, Punjabi and news (English) channels is Rs 15.07 crore. Bucket R1, which has all channels in languages not covered above, was priced at Rs 11.07 crore as compared to Rs 3 crore in the previous auction.
As earlier reported by exchange4media, Prasar Bharati concluded its 75th online auction for DD FreeDish MPEG-2 slots in February. The pubcaster had earned Rs 1,156 crore from the sale of 64 slots.
In February, Bucket A (Hindi movie channels) bagged the highest slots – 14 for Rs 241 crore.
Next comes the news genre (13 channels for Rs 231.95 crore) and Hindi GEC channels (12 slots for Rs 227.7 crore).
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