Mumbai: Prasar Bharati has invited applications for allotment of vacant MPEG-2 slots of DD Free Dish DTH platform on a pro-rata basis for the period from 1 April 2022 to 31 March 2023. The e-auction process will be tentatively held on 23 March.

The TV channels have been categorised into six buckets namely ‘R1,’ ‘A+,’ ‘A,’ ‘B,’ ‘C,’ and ‘D’ in accordance with the genre/language of the channel. Bucket R1 is reserved for devotional i.e, spiritual Aayush channels with a starting pro-rata reserve price set at Rs 20 crore. A+ is reserved for Hindi GEC channels with a reserve price starting at Rs 15.45 crore. Bucket A is reserved for Hindi movie channels with starting reserve price of Rs 13.05 crore. Bucket B is reserved for Hindi music channels, Hindi sports channels, Bhojpuri GEC channels, Bhojpuri movie channels, and Hindi teleshopping channels with a starting reserve price of Rs 11.10 crore. Bucket C is reserved for Hindi, English and Punjabi news and current affairs channels with a starting reserve price of Rs 10.05 crore. Bucket D is reserved for remaining language/genre channels with a reserve price of Rs 7.05 crore.

Prasar Bharati has said that the e-auction will be bucket-wise starting with the bucket having the highest reserve price i.e, from ‘Bucket R1’, and will progressively go down in the order of reserve price. 

The e-auction will be conducted in accordance with policy guidelines for allotment of DD Free Dish slots notified on 15 January 2019 and amended from time to time.