Olympics, Satyamev Jayate fail to boost Doordarshan revenues

Source: indiatelevision.com; By B B NAGPAL, indiatelevision.com team

Date: 5 December 2012 7:28 pm

NEW DELHI: Public broadcaster Doordarshan has not managed to boost its overall revenues this financial year despite having done well during the 2012 Olympics in London and getting to simulcast popular shows produced by private broadcasters.

Even the state assembly elections failed to pump up the revenues of Doordarshan as it posted an almost flat-line revenue growth.

In the seven months ended 31 October, Doordarshan's revenues totalled Rs 5.77 billion. The average monthly revenue is at the same level as in the previous year. In the six months ended 30 September 2011, the public broadcasters' revenues were Rs 4.89 billion.

Doordarshan's failure to improve its revenues in a year when it telecast properties with high income potential shows the urgent need for revamping its sales and marketing efforts. It had simulcast the highly popular Star Plus show Satyamev Jayate hosted by actor Aamir Khan, newly-produced mythological serial Ramayana by Zee and youth channel MTV's Coke Studio.

Prasar Bharati, which runs a slew of Doordarshan television channels and All India Radio (AIR), needs to enhance its revenues as the government has from this year decided to fund only the capital expenditure and expenses towards salaries. The remaining operational expenditure will have to be met by Prasar Bharati from its own revenue generation.

Prasar Bharati needs to generate additional revenues of Rs 3.5 billion to Rs 4 billion to be able to meet its operational expenditure, excluding salaries, which would be in the region of Rs 20 billion. A large part of the additional revenue generation is expected from Doordarshan.

Prasar Bharati's higher revenue generation plans include aggressive marketing of advertising slots, putting to use spare infrastructure, bringing about an improvement in content, augmenting DTH services and sharing of towers. The plan also includes efforts at increasing viewership of Doordarshan and listenership of AIR.

The Prasar Bharati board has unanimously approved Prasar Bharati CEO Jawhar Sircar's proposal to hire professional marketing executives at market salary levels to help the public broadcaster come up with innovative revenue generation plans.

Doordarshan's revenues were Rs 9.90 billion in 2011-12, Rs 9.44 billion in 2010-11 and Rs 8.28 billion in 2009-10. Its total expenditure in the first seven months of this year was Rs 9.90 billion.

Doordarshan's total expenditure in 2009-10 was Rs 14.21 billion, in 2010-11 Rs 14.69 billion, and in 2011-12 Rs 19.10 billion.

Doordarshan's expenditure in the current year so far has been higher due to the impact of the Sixth Central Pay Commission recommendations. In addition, an amount of Rs 1.6 billion was paid this year as accumulated arrears of service tax pertaining to the period from 2003 to 2007.

Information and Broadcasting minister Manish Tewari said under the financial restructuring plan recommended by the Group of Ministers attached to Prasar Bharati and accepted by the cabinet, 100 per cent expenses towards salary and salary related establishment expenses during the next five years from 2012-13 to 2016-17 will be met by the government while all other items of operating expenses are to be borne by Prasar Bharati itself.

The capital loans provided to Prasar Bharati are to be converted into grants-in-aid, and Plan Capital support in future will be provided by the Government in the form of grants-in-aid.

Accumulated interests on the loan-in perpetuity amounting to Rs 2.98 billion and accumulated interests on capital loans and penal interest thereon amounting to Rs 1.10 billion will also be waived.

The accumulated arrears of space segment and spectrum charges of Prasar Bharati up to 31 March 2011 amounting to Rs 1.34954 billion too are being waived.

Link: http://www.indiantelevision.com/headlines/y2k12/dec/dec46.php