Govt comes to rescue of DD's DTH service

The government has come to the rescue of its free direct to home (DTH) service, DD Direct Plus, with an additional budgetary support of Rs 65-70 crore to take on the competition posed by the private DTH players.

The additional funds will be used to increase the channel strength of DD Direct Plus from 30 to 75 within 2007.

Apart from funding, government is also looking at putting in place a content policy for attracting niche free-to-air channels on DD Direct Plus, ministry sources told Business Standard.

Annually, Prasar Bharati incurs a cost of Rs 30 crore for hosting the 30 free-to-air channels and 12 radio channels without any revenue generation. Among them, 19 channels are of Doordarshan alone.

Launched three years ago with an objective to cover remote regions still not reached by Doordarshan's terrestrial transmission, DD Direct Plus has struggled to attract popular pay channels on its platform.

Additionally, over Rs 160 crore has been spent by Prasar Bharati on DD Direct Plus without any means of revenue generation.

Undeterred, Minister of Information and Broadcasting Priya Ranjan Dasmunshi said DD Direct Plus is doing public service unlike the private DTH companies, and therefore more channels will be added to increase its value for the viewers.

"I will personally see that there are at least 75 channels on DD Direct within this year and for that all necessary steps will be taken," Dasmunshi said. He said he was not bothered if popular channels were not coming aboard.

"We were on DD Direct till it was free. Now they want us to pay Rs 1 crore per channel and that is why most pay channels have withdrawn their channels. Moreover, we do not know who is watching our channels unlike Dish TV or Tata Sky, where the subscriber numbers and city penetrations are known," a senior executive from Star TV said.

DD Direct Plus claims to have got over 2.3 million subscribers as opposed to nearly 2 million subscribers of Dish TV and 5 lakh for Tata Sky, the two private players.

But city consumers are not opting for DD Direct even though its cost is the cheapest at Rs 2,200 per subscriber with no monthly fee. For Dish TV or Tata Sky, activation costs range from Rs 3,000-Rs 4,000 in addition to Rs 200-300 subscription fee per month.

According to media analysts, government needs to adopt a two-pronged strategy: a clear policy on what channels should show apart from Doordarshan channels and incentives for dealers to market DD Direct even in big cities.