Winning Bizness Desk

Mumbai. Once considered as 'khatara' channel, government-run channel Doordarshan making moolah. After the formation of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government at the center, the days of the government media also started changing. Through the program 'Mann Ki Baat' All India Radio i.e. All India Radio got millions of new listeners. At the same time, Parliament TV was formed by merging Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha TV. Not only this, the government also started a separate channel DD Kisan for the farmers and with this, the earning of Prasar Bharati has shot up and Prasar Bharati has earned more than 1000 crores from DD Free Dish itself. Prasar Bharati's DD Free Dish platform has earned a record Rs 1070 crore from the auction of 65 slots. This is 57 percent more than the income earned from the sale of 59 slots last year. Last year this income was Rs 645 crore.

What are the reasons?

Experts believe that due to changes in the rules and methods of slots auction during the Modi government's tenure, Prasar Bharati has been able to increase its income. Public sector broadcaster Prasar Bharati has now allowed channels of different genres to bid for those slots which were earlier fixed only for the particular genre.

How DD Free Dish work ?

DD Free Dish has 6 buckets of slots. Among these, A+ is for Hindi language general entertainment channels. A includes Hindi language movie channels and teleshopping channels. B bucket includes music, sports and Bhojpuri channels in Hindi. C bucket is for Hindi news channels. On the other hand, D bucket includes other Hindi, regional, religious and English news channels. Apart from this, there are regional channels in the R1 category which do not fall in any other bucket. DD Free Dish has earned 189.65 crores from A+ category slots, 329.55 crores from A, 206.5 crores from B, 199 crores from C, 141.85 crores from D and 3.05 crores from R1.