The Hindu Business Line : Prasar Bharati to charge political broadcasts

PRASAR Bharati intends to charge airtime costs for the mandatory broadcast of the speeches of representatives of various political parties during elections. It has represented to the Election Commission in this regard and the Chief Election Commissioner, Mr T. S. Krishnamurthy, had agreed in-principle to the request.

Disclosing this to newspersons here on Monday, the PB's Chief Executive Officer, Mr K.S. Sarma, said the airtime costs of Doordarshan (DD) and All India Radio (AIR) during the national elections would work out to about Rs 60 crore. "We wrote to the Election Commission that we can't provide the airtime free of cost," he said.

Stating that the organisation was giving Rs 600 crore worth of airtime on DD and AIR free of cost for public purposes every year, Mr. Sarma said, "Now we want to charge for this also."

Despite providing free airtime for public purposes, he said the revenues of AIR and DD showed an upward trend in the last two years, crossing the targets set by the Government. In the current fiscal, AIR was set to post revenue of Rs 150 crore as against a target of Rs 125 crore, while DD's revenues would be over Rs 600 crore against Rs 550 crore.

Even in 2002-03, the revenues of AIR and DD stood at Rs 114 crore and Rs 553 crore, respectively as against a target of Rs 90 crore and Rs 550 crore. The target set for DD this year was same as last year as the total advertisement spend on television was stagnant at Rs 3,600 crore despite the proliferation of a number of TV channels.

Mr Sarma said AIR had netted advertisement revenue of Rs 6.5 crore for the upcoming Indo-Pak cricket series, for which it had procured the broadcasting rights for $40,000. On the other hand, DD has purchased the rights for one-hour highlights of the matches for $2 lakh, and it would get advertisement revenue of "at least Rs 5 crore." With the Ten Sports channel securing the global transmission rights for the cricket series, DD's efforts to procure the rights for broadcasting the entire matches had not been fruitful.

Replying to a question, he said Prasar Bharati has charged Rs 10 crore for the recent "India Shining" advertisement on DD and AIR channels. For the weekly "Dial your CM" programme of the Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister, Mr N. Chandrababu Naidu, on DD, it has not taken any money as the State Government had made good for this "through other means."

The State Government had provided Rs 10 crore for the broadcast of other Government programmes and DD had already received Rs 3 crore in this regard. On the other hand, the airtime cost of Mr Naidu's programme was estimated at just Rs 11,000 per week.

On the occasion of the 75th anniversary of broadcasting, AIR had come out with a "National Artists Scheme" under which 30 artists of national eminence would be presented with Rs 1 lakh by this month. Those artists who have attained 75 years of age and had remained in "top grade" for a period of 30 years are eligible for the award under the one-time scheme.