The Comptroller & Auditor General (CAG) has pulled up Doordarshan for its failure to strengthen the system of realisation of dues for commercial broadcasting which had touched a staggering Rs 11.44 crore by the end of 1995. In its report presented to Parliament, the CAG noted that, out of this amount, nearly Rs 3 crore was due from 52 agencies no longer doing business with Doordarshan.
It observed that no records were maintained by DD to show the outstandings from month to month and it could not furnish the details of amounts due from advertising agencies for the period 1993-96.
Sources said at least eight organisations owed DD at least Rs 1 crore during 1996-97 ABCL (Rs 851 lakh), Plus Channel (Rs 500 lakh), Multi Channel (Rs 340 lakh), Prom- inent Advertising Rs 123 lakh, Crea- tive Eye (Rs 114 lakh), W D Consu- m er Rs 109 lakh, Sitaravision Rs 105 lakh and Media Asia (Rs 104 lakh).
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These figures were provisional and did not include interest as reconciliation for 1996-97 was being processed, the sources said, adding that DD was taking recourse to the contractual provisions including encashment of bank guarantees, de-accreditation of the errant agencies, arbitration and legal action for recovering the dues.
Among the reasons cited by DD to CAG for the huge amounts remaining outstanding include telecast of advertisement without contracts by mistake, telecast of ads in a time category not contracted, telecast of advertisements which were cancelled by agencies, duration of the telecast being more than that contracted for, poor quality of video or audio during transmission and telecast on the wrong channel.
DD commercial service sells time for commercial advertisements through ad agencies on the prescribed terms and conditions and these agencies are required to execute contracts with DD as soon as booking of a spot for commercial ads is confirmed.
According to the terms and conditions of contracts with the agencies, DD has to submit monthly bills and the advertisers are required to pay it promptly. While in the case of accredited agencies, the payment has to be made within 45 days from the first of the month following the date of telecast, in the case of non-accredited agencies, payment has to be made not later than 15 days.
Arranging DD for the manner in which it had dealt with the issue, the CAG said it indicated inaction on DDs part and also highlighted the irregularities in the procedure of business dealing with accredited and non-accredited agencies.
First, non-accredited agencies were utilising credit facility which they were not entitled to as per the rules. On the contrary, they are to make payment 15 days in advance of telecast of the programme.
The CAG noted that many firms had outstanding dues in excess of the maximum amount of bank guarantee of Rs 3 lakh.
Even these amounts of bank guarantees had not been encashed in cases of non-payment of dues by the agencies within the prescribed period.
The report noted that DD had lost Rs 244 lakh by allowing free commercial time (FCT) in excess of the prescribed limit to producers of popular serials Disney Adventure and Surabhi for the period between 1993 and 1995.
It said the Doordarshan director-general at that time had allowed additional 90 seconds per episode at the instance of the information and broadcasting ministry over and above the FCT permissible as per the rate card.
Since both 0900 and 1030 hour slots on Sundays are a-special, the sponsor got undue benefit of 90 seconds extra FCT valued at Rs 4.50 lakh per episode till March 1994 and Rs 3.60 lakh per episode thereafter, calculated at the spot-buy rate for each episode, it said.
This resulted in loss of revenue of Rs 204.30 lakh on telecast of 52 episodes of the programme with benefit of equal amount to the producer.
In the case of Surabhi, which was shown on the national network as repeat telecast from September 1993 to May 1995 in the afternoon under B category, the then DD chief allowed 120 seconds of FCT per episode as against the admissibility of only 90 seconds. This resulted in a revenue loss of nearly Rs 40 lakh.
The CAG said the matter was referred to the ministry in August last year but their reply was awaited as of j