The Hindu Business Line : Local focal

PUBLIC broadcaster Prasar Bharati clocked an impressive growth rate of 25 per cent last year, and yet its expenditure overshot earnings by well over Rs 1,000 crore. CEO K. S. Sarma announced that this year's target will be Rs 1,000 crore (from Rs 825 crore the previous year), at a time when voices for Prasar Bharati's financial autonomy are gaining strength.

What new sources will the organisation tap into, Catalyst asked Sarma, especially when monies from election-related campaigns and big-time cricket wouldn't be as huge as last year? To begin with, Sarma clarifies that "election-related campaigns got us some amount but not big amounts." As for cricket, Prasar Bharati "will bid for the next tournament. BCCI hasn't decided what to do. If they sell the rest of the series, there will be little value, because the major series are over. The bids will be very low. So, what they are trying to do is to include another India-Pakistan series as one package," he says, adding that "this is all conjecture, that's how it's coming out in the newspapers."

With the cricket scene uncertain, Sarma's bullish outlook can be particularly attributed to two words in broadcasting lingo: narrow-casting and scrolling.

Narrow-casting, first. The Agriculture Ministry has granted Rs 300 crore to Doordarshan and Rs 100 crore to AIR for the rest of the two years of the Tenth Five Year Plan. The organisations will air programmes to deal with specific agricultural problems of the local region. "At that time, the national network will get delinked and local transmitters will take over."

V. Appakutty, Chief Engineer, AIR & Doordarshan, says his organisation will collaborate with key agricultural universities for the content, which will be aired for half-an-hour daily.

Scrolling, says Sarma, will be Prasar Bharati's tool to "compete with the local cable operators, who are selling for Rs 200 or so. We will start scrolling in our high and low power transmitters. It may be not be a local programme, but the person in, say, Coimbatore will see ads of his local silk sari house or jewellery shop being scrolled across."

With the help of the numerous local transmitters, Sarma hopes to make a big success of it. Scrolling done on an experimental basis in Salem (Tamil Nadu) fetched Prasar Bharati Rs 18 lakh in a year. "It shows that a person who wants to advertise is not interested in the whole of State or the nation, he is just interested in his city. If my rate is for the whole country or the State, he can never afford it. It's a waste of money for him."

Doordarshan will charge between Rs 200 and Rs 600 for a single scroll.

Sarma is also working toward strengthening the recovery process of dues. Prasar Bharati's outstandings are about Rs 150 crore, and "our recovery process is taking too much time. Follow-up is difficult. Even if the court gives a decree after 20 years, execution of the civil decree might be a problem." So, "we are now asking everybody who does business with us to give an affidavit that they don't owe us money anywhere in the country. There is no other way of counterchecking."

There are also Government departments in the defaulters list. But "it looks like I can't collect interest from them. They are turning around and saying there's no provision to pay interest from the Government side. So, we may have to exempt them."

All others including PSUs, he says, will not be exempt from interest payment.

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