DD Direct Plus will not be able to increase the channels from 59 to 150

According to Finical Express News DD Direct Plus will not be able to increase the channels from 59 to 150, it can not auction the same to earn. 


This is Bad News for all DD Direct Plus users because they were waiting for new channels in Dec.2011. The original target of increasing the channel capacity of DD Direct Plus to 150 by early 2012 and to 200 by 2013 will not be met due to lack of transponders on satellites But sources in Prasar Bharati deny this. “ISRO will only be able to provide additional transponders to Prasar Bharati in 2013. Therefore, we'll have to operate with five transponders only, which means we can only increase our capacity to 75-76 channels and not 100 or 200 as planned. The plans to outsource operational control of DD Direct Plus is now virtually shelved,” a senior official-in Prasar Bharati told FE.




DD Direct Plus offers 59 channels, a bulk of which are from private broadcasters who have paid R2-3 crore each to the public broadcaster after auctions for 365-day assured space and service. Doordarshan was looking to auction most of the new slots upon expansion to private broadcasters to earn a minimum of R300 crore before the start of new fiscal.Along with auctioning slots, Prasar Bharati was also set to hand over the operational control of DD Direct Plus to private DTH operators for a fixed fees. FE was the first to report this in August.


So far, the broadcaster has successfully auctioned and allotted 26 slots to private broadcasters on DD Direct Plus raking in R63 crore in revenue. This is more than three times the amount it used to generate before migrating to e-auction mechanism in July (charging fixed rate of R80 lakh per slot). As a result, the average revenue per slot jumped to R2.42 crore.Based on the current average slot rate and projected increase, Doordarshan would have got another R220-270 crore from auctioning new slots thereby crossing the R300 crore-mark before March 31, 2012. According to Prasar Bharati officials, the slot-auction revenue alone would have accounted for nearly one-third of the planned budget allocations for Doordarshan