Prasar Bharati revenue up 48%

Doordarshan contributed Rs 960 cr and All India Radio Rs 270 cr.

Public broadcaster Prasar Bharati has announced a 48 per cent rise in gross revenue at Rs 1,230 crore for the financial year 2005-06 against Rs 831 crore in the previous fiscal.

Doordarshan contributed Rs 960 crore and All India Radio, another Rs 270 crore to the broadcaster's kitty.

Prasar Bharati Chief Executive Officer, K S Sarma said the public broadcaster, which incurs an annual expenditure of Rs 1,700-1,800 crore per year, has set a target revenue of Rs 1,500 crore this fiscal.

"This is a singular achievement for Prasar Bharati without compromising its values as a public broadcaster. Our revenue drivers have been our ability to enthuse the governments to use our platform for information dissemination, aggressive marketing and telecasting films", said Sarma.

Doordarshan has also begun to insist on having proprietary rights over the content it telecasts and that has led to a surge in revenues, added Sarma.

Unveiling the roadmap for the year ahead, Sarma spoke of taking Doordarshan overseas, starting from US by the end of May this year.

"We have struck a deal for this for which we will get $ 3 million over the next five years," he said.

Also, the Vijay Amritraj Company, First Serve, would be providing, three DD channels, DD India, DD Bharati and DD News globally on all 3G mobile phones worldwide, on a non-exclusive basis.

In another significant announcement, Sarma said the 33 channels under Doordarshan's Direct To Home (DTH) service, Doordarshan Direct Plus would eventually go up to 51.

This 'zero subscription' DTH service would soon demand carriage fees of Rs 1 crore from those private channels which are willing to come onto this platform. It would be based on a 'no profit no loss' basis and would commence from next month.

Those on board include Zee Music, Sun TV, BBC, Aaj Tak, Headlines Today, Star Utsav and Aakash Bangla.

Doordarshan also announced that it had partnered private mobile applications developer ACL Wireless Ltd. to launch SMS and Interactive Voice Response (IVR) based interactive services. From April 20, the National Stock Exchange prices would also be available through this service.