The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (MIB) has stated that Doordarshan FreeDish incurred no loss of revenue for the period between 2017-18 when an e-auction process for onboarding private sector TV channels was put on hold.

Agreeing that the auction process, where private sector TV channels aggressively bid for limited slots on the free to air DTH platform FreeDish, was kept in abeyance from August 12, 2017 to May 2018, Information and Broadcasting Minister Anurag Thakur said, “There was no loss of revenue to Prasar Bharati during the e-auction abeyance period or in subsequent years.”

Replying to a query in Rajya Sabha (Upper House) last week on the possible loss of revenue to FreeDish when the auction process was put on hold, Thakur explained it was done as the then existing policy was under review.

“Review of policy for the benefit of Prasar Bharati, stakeholders and the public in general on the basis of recent technological advancements is a regular exercise done from time to time. It is in this connection that a need was felt to review the existing e-auction policy, for which it was kept in abeyance on 12.08.2017,” the Minister explained.

The question on FreeDish was asked by Jawhar Sircar, a retired senior bureaucrat who served as the CEO of Prasar Bharati from 2012-2016, but quit his post a little before his term was to end, citing personal reasons. He was nominated by the Trinamool Congress to the Rajya Sabha and got elected unopposed in 2021.

The Minister, in his reply, stressed that FreeDish’s earnings from auctions in the 2017-18 (before abeyance of e-auction) was Rs. 278.1 crore, while in 2018-19 (during abeyance of e-auction) it was Rs. 454.0 crore and in 2019-20 (after resumption of e-auction) the revenue earned was Rs. 457 crore.

Sircar had sought the reasons for which the MIB had suddenly put on hold the e-auction policy of FreeDish for a period of 10 months in 2017-18 and the action taken for ‘presumptive losses’ made by Prasar Bharati and Doordarshan during the period.

Meanwhile, to give a perspective to the FreeDish issue, the then CEO of Prasar Bharati Shashi Vempati in an interview to The Hindu newspaper in April 2022 had said that factors for the strong revenue growth of Prasar Bharati included  money coming from auctioning of slots to private TV channels who bid aggressively because the platform’s reach is big, especially in rural India.

“It is mainly due to the growth in DD FreeDish revenue and a strong post-COVID-19 recovery in radio advertising revenues,” Vempati told the newspaper when asked what were the reasons for Prasar Bharati, which owns DD and All India Radio, posting strong revenue growth.

Though there are no official figures available on the subscriber base of FreeDish, industry estimates put it at about 40-42 million households. The service is free and only costs a subscriber a nominal initial amount that has to be spent on buying the dish antenna and the set-top-box.