New Delhi : Prasar Bharati has relaxed the eligibility criteria and various norms that restricted the participation of many aspiring Producers in the proposed auction of Prime time slots on Doordarshan that attracted wide spread criticism from Small and Medium size Production Houses.
As per the changes made in the slot sale policy by public broadcaster Prasar Bharati, Film production companies will now be allowed to bid for prime-time programming slots on Doordarshan (DD) along with television content producers.
Doordarshan had to cancel a planned auction for prime-time programming slots on 14th July as some potential bidders failed to meet the eligibility criteria. However, in its board meeting earlier this week, Prasar Bharati asked Doordarshan to restart the auction process and issue a fresh set of applications inviting the production houses to bid.
In further relaxation of norms, Prasar Bharati has removed the restrictions on programming languages, thus widening the pool of eligible applicants. Earlier, only the production houses with an experience in Hindi general entertainment programming were entitled to bid in the auction.
“We have taken into consideration many of the suggestions that were earlier given by production houses. A lot of concessions have been made to attract more producers to participate in the auction,” said Jawhar Sircar, chief executive officer at Prasar Bharati which runs Doordarshan and All India Radio.
According to the revised policy, a production house will now be eligible to bid if it has logged a revenue of at least Rs.3 crore per annum (reduced from Rs.5 crore per annum) in each of the past three financial years and has produced at least 200 hours (reduced from 300 hours) of general entertainment programming including feature films in the last three calendar years among other conditions.
