After some  fierce bidding and spending of serious money for a berth on Doordarshan’s FTA DTH platform, Free Dish, 57 channels can heave a sigh of relief for having made it to the final list.

The news category saw maximum see-sawing with TV channels trying to outbid competition for limited available space in the MPEG-2 slots on Free Dish. Republic TV Bharat and Network18 group, according to industry sources, each dished out over Rs. 20 crore/Rs. 200 million for a slot.

Rajat Sharma-founded India TV and Prannoy Roy-started NDTV India both are said to have coughed up over Rs. 12 crore (Rs. 120 million).

The base price for news channels was Rs. 7 crore/Rs. 70 million.

According to Prasar Bharati News Service (PBNS), 57 channels were successfully allocated slots in various buckets or categories after “multiple rounds of robust bidding that spread through the entire week” having started on February 22, 2021.
“Subject to completion of all formalities, the channels who have successfully bid for slots will come on air on DD Free Dish platform from April 1, 2021,” PBNS reported.

The channels that were successful at the end of the bidding included new entrant The Q (in the Hindi GEC category with a bid of over Rs. 150 million), Shemaroo TV, Colors Rishtey, Star Utsav, Zee Anmol, Sony Pal, Big Magic, ABZY Movies, BDM, Dhinchaak, Manoranjan TV, Star Utsav Movies,, 9XM, B4U Bhojpuri, Dabangg, Filamchi, Mastii, MTV Beats, Aaj Tak, NDTV India, News18 India, Zee Hindustan, Zee News, ABP News, Fakt Marathi, Shemaroo Marathibana, Zee Zabardast, Aastha, Sadhana TV and  Sanskar TV, News Nation, Manoranjan Grand, ABZY Dhakad, Bflix Movies, Aaho Music and Azaad.

The six categories or buckets, as DD calls them, were BucketA+ that included all Hindi GECs; BucketA was for Hindi movie channels; Bucket B was for Hindi music channels, Hindi sports channels, Bhojpuri movies and GECs, and Hindi tele-shopping channels; Bucket C consisted of news and current affairs channels in Hindi, English and Punjabi languages; Bucket D comprised other remaining language channels and Bucket R1 comprised devotional/Aayush/spiritual channels.

An earlier story on the e-auction process of DD Free Dish could be read at

Few popular news channels yet to book slots on DD Free Dish

Free Dish claims to have a reach of approximately 30 million TV households, which is approximately 15 per cent of the total TV HHs in the country and experts opine the massive reach mostly spans semi-urban and rural areas of India.