The standoff between the state broadcaster Prasar Bharati and the Information and Broadcasting Ministry continued as the Board meeting on Monday failed to resolve any of the contentious issues, including terminating the services of all contractual employees.
Various committees that have audited the organisation, including the Sam Pitroda committee, have noted that the state broadcaster is overstaffed. Doordarshan News alone has over 280 contractual workers, most of whom form the core team that generates content for the channel. On Monday, DD and All India Radio officials reiterated their stand that letting go of the contractual workers will virtually shut down the public broadcasters.
“Instead, both the organisations have suggested other cost-cutting measures, including repatriating officials who have been working on deputation in the two organisations,” a Board member told The Hindu .
Issue deferred
The I&B Ministry, however, has restated its position that the contractual workers should be fired to make the organisations leaner and financially viable. For now, the issue has been deferred.
On the issue of shutting down DD Free Dish (formerly DD Direct, the country’s only free-to-air digital direct-broadcast satellite television service) again, both the Ministry and the Board remained at loggerheads with the Ministry pushing for closure. The Ministry also wants general entertainment channels to be replaced by channels run by the Union Ministries.
The Prasar Bharati Board has contended that this would make the bouquet uninteresting. The viewership of Doordarshan would “crash and Tata Sky and Zee Entertainment Dish TV will go laughing all the way to the Bank”, the Board said.
The Prasar Bharati reiterated the financial and legal implications of the closure of Free Dish, saying that shutting down the service would result in a revenue loss of ₹300 crore a year, wrecking its finances. The DD Free Dish service was inaugurated in 2004 with 33 channels. It now carries 104 television and 40 radio channels and reaches 20 million homes. When DD Free Dish was started, the general entertainment channels were auctioned for ₹25 lakh a year. They now command ₹8.5 crore a year.
