New Delhi: TV Producers who had provided Doordarshan with programmes under the previous self-finance commission scheme 2014 had petitioned the court saying that the pilot episode or production be evaluated for its worthiness before the scheme is scrapped and a new slot sale policy gets introduced.
The Delhi high court has given Prasar Bharati two weeks’ notice to respond to charges that the new “slot sale” policy brought by the public broadcaster is discriminatory against small producers.
The contention of the petitioners was that a change in policy could not have been introduced by Doordarshan midway before appraising their proposals which were accepted by the public broadcaster along with the processing fee of Rs 25,000.
The producers also contended that the new policy was “discriminatory, violative of the rights of small individual producers” and heavily in favour of large production companies.
Among the guidelines of the new slot sale policy is a floor fee of Rs 2 lakh with production companies having to show an annual turnover of Rs 5 crore for three consecutive financial year and 300 hours of general entertainment programming in Hindi in the last two calendar years.
Prasar Bharati’s counsel submitted that the proposals had not been considered in view of the change in policy and the petitioners had been communicated about the change.
Observing that while the public broadcaster was responsible for its own policy decisions, the HC asked it to communicate to the producers the reasons for refusing to appraise their products and assure that the decision was not arbitrary.
Earlier, Doordarshan planned to move from the current self-financing category, where producers invest money to make serials/programmes which are then marketed by Doordarshan, to a regime where prime-time slots will be auctioned, fetching the broadcaster more revenues.
At stake, according to officials, are 19 prime-time and mid-prime time programmes, whose futures look uncertain if the old policy is junked mid-way.
