Prasar Bharati invites applications for vacant DD Free Dish MPEG-4 slots in the 57th online E-Auction

India’s public broadcaster Prasar Bharati on Tuesday invited applications for the allotment of vacant MPEG-4 slots of DD Free Dish on a pro-rata basis for the period between April 1st 2022 and March 31st 2023. With this, the free service provider has initiated the slots allotment process for the year 2022-2023. 

Bidding for the vacant MPEG-4 slots will be open to all genres and languages TV channels with a reserve price of Rs 50,000,00 per year. The auction is expected to begin on February 10th 2022 and the last date to submit applications is February 8th 2022 till 3 pm.

Only satellite TV channels licensed by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (MIB) would be allowed to participate in the e-auction. Broadcasters can either participate directly or through their authorized distributor partners. International public broadcasters who are licensed by the MIB may participate in the auction process as well.

Channels participating in this e-auction must pay a mandatory non-refundable processing fee of Rs 25,000 online and a participation fee of Rs 10 Lakhs should be paid through demand draft. Unsuccessful bidders will get back the participation fee within three weeks after the declaration of the e-auction results. Successful bidders who won slots need to make payments in ten 10 monthly instalments with each instalment 1/10 of difference of bid amount and participation fee. 

In case of failure to pay the required amount within the scheduled date, a 14.5% interest per annum will be applicable and if the channel still doesn’t deposit the required amount then the participation fee along with any instalment already deposited will be forfeited and the channel will be discontinued from DD Free Dish Platform.