MUMBAI: After a lull, the battle between broadcasters and TAM has resumed with public broadcaster Prasar Bharati moving Competition Commission of India against the audience measurement agency for anti-competitive practices.

The pubcaster had filed the complaint against TAM on Friday alleging that the ratings agency has been using its dominant position in audience measurement by excluding markets where Doordarshan channels have strong presence.

The complaint was filed under section 4 of the Competition Act 2002, which pertains to abuse of dominant position by a market player.

"On Friday (November 16) we received information from Prasar Bharati alleging anti-competitive practice by TAM. We will consider the matter through the week and if prima facie it makes a case, we will ask the Director General (Investigations) to probe the allegations," newswire PTI quotes a senior CCI official as saying.

Prasar Bharati has alleged that TAM has installed peoplemeters in 8,000 homes and only covers towns and cities with 100,000 plus population, which keeps keeps rural as well as smaller towns out of audience measurement.

The pubcaster had decided to move the CCI after its board meeting in September. Prasar Bharati officials feel that the organisation should claim damages from the ratings agency due to defects in its rating system.

Earlier, the news broadcaster NDTV filed in July a law suit against Nielsen and Kantar Media, which jointly own Tam India, for manipulation of viewership data. NDTV has demanded $810 million as compensation for the loss in revenues it has suffered over the years and $580 million in penalty for negligence by Nielsen and Kantar officials.

Ever since NDTV has filed the lawsuit, calls for setting up Broadcast Audience Research Council (Barc) has grown louder with the broadcasters being in the forefront of the demand.

The Indian Broadcasting Foundation (IBF), Advertising Agencies Association of India (AAAI) and Indian Society of Advertisers (ISA) have held several meetings on how to roll out Barc. The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (MIB) has also asked the industry to speed up the existence of Barc.

NEW DELHI: Information and Broadcasting (I&B) Minister Manish Tewari has assured employees of Prasar Bharati of early redressal of their grievances including long-pending promotions.

During his first visit to All India Radio, Doordarshan and the Prasar Bharati headquarters after becoming the Minister on Wednesday, Tewari was assured by Prasar Bharati chief executive officer Jawhar Sircar that the recruitment rules for most cadres were ready and promotions would be granted shortly.

Sircar said the government?s decision bear the expenditure on salaries of most employees and the recent financial concessions announced following the recommendations of a Group of Ministers had greatly helped the pubcaster in initiating new programmes.

The Minister was apprised about the functioning of AIR and DD and the broadcaster?s immediate plans for expansion.

The minister assured the employees that they were free to approach him directly whenever they had any problems.

NEW DELHI: Prasar Bharati has won a Full Member?s seat at the Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union (ABU) Administrative Council after eight years.

The Administrative Council consists of 14 Full and Additional Full members, who are elected by the members of the annual General Assembly for a three-year term. Previous CEOs of Prasar Bharati had been Vice Presidents until former CEO B S Lalli refused to take the term as VP in Tokyo two years ago.

India?s name was proposed by Japan?s public service broadcaster (NHK).

"It is unfortunate that India did not even bid for a single seat last year, when the ABU General Assembly was held in Delhi, as the host country usually has a claim on the Administrative Council seat," the pubcaster said in a statement here.

The ABU, which celebrates its 50th anniversary in 2014, has more than 220 member broadcasters large from the region?s 58 countries ranging from Turkey in the west to Samoa in the east and from Russia in the north to New Zealand in the south.

The ABU runs a daily Asiavision satellite TV news exchange, involving co-production and programme exchanges and technical, programming, legal and management consultancy services, as well as international frequency planning and coordination. It also negotiates rights for major sports events, organises coverage for the region, and provides rights-free content acquisition for developing countries.

The organisation promotes the collective interests of television and radio broadcasters and encourages regional and international co-operation between broadcasters. The ABU Secretariat is located in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and is headed by a Secretary-General appointed by the General Assembly.

"The membership is another cap in the feather of the Prasar Bharati. Considering the competition from a number of countries, the unanimous support for Prasar Bharati was a major achievement. The membership gives India a direct say in matters as crucial as policy issues affecting broadcasters, negotiation of telecasting rights for major sporting events and ability to put across its point of view on the global flow of information," according to Prasar Bharati CEO Jawhar Sircar, who led a team of officers from various departments of Doordarshan and AIR to Seoul, South Korea, for the ABU General Assembly.

The Prasar Bharati team, which was camping in Seoul from 10th October, worked overtime to seek support from prominent members including founding member Japan?s NHK, South Korea?s KBS and Malaysia?s RTM. The Prasar Bharati Secretariat worked in the background, sending emails to all the members of the General Assembly.

Elaborating on the strategy adopted for the vital election to the 14-member Council, Sircar said, "We were able to persuade Pakistan to step down in our favour and Japan?s public service broadcaster (NHK) which is also a major financial contributor, to propose our name. Our team personally met with members of dozens of national public service broadcasters to present India?s claim for candidature. After seeing such a huge support for India, other candidates withdrew their candidature and we were elected unanimously".

NEW DELHI: Close on the heels of a financial package including some waivers approved recently by the Union Cabinet, Prasar Bharati today announced that the government had approved the filling up of 1150 posts in the programming and the technical wings of Doordarshan and All India Radio.

These posts are part of the 3452 essential category posts which were approved by the Group of Ministers (GoM) headed by the present Finance Minister P. Chidamabaram in 2011. A majority of these posts belong to Group B & C, that is, Grade Pay of less than Rs 4,600. While the Group B & C would be filled up by Staff Selection Commission, the remaining would be filled up by the Prasar Bharati Recruitment Board. The recruitment process is expected to be over by middle of the next year.

Prasar Bharati CEO Jawhar Sircar said: ?This is the first major infusion of new blood into Doordarshan and All India Radio after a period of 15 long years. After approval of the Cabinet for the financial restructuring, which involved a waiver of Rs 120.71 billion, this is the second biggest decision. It would go a long way in creating quality content for our viewers and help us in facing the emerging competition.?

The 1150 posts include Assistant Station Directors, Assistant Director (Programme), Engineering Assistants, Programme Executives, Transmission Executives, Technicians, Camerapersons, Production Assistants and Administrative Staff.

Member (Personnel) Brig. (Retd) V A M Hussain added: ?These were critical and essential posts, which had lapsed and needed to be revived. A number of our stations were without engineers and programming staff, which had affected their operations. It is a new dawn on the horizon of Prasar Bharati and will help the Corporation to tide over its acute manpower shortage.?

After the revival of the Prasar Bharati Board under the current CEO, it has been working on a number of plans to revive the public broadcaster through aggressive focus on shoring up revenues through marketing, organisational restructuring and manpower planning.

The pubcaster plans to have six senior officers with domain expertise to look after various verticals including Marketing, DTH, Technology, Infrastructure, Archives and Security. The Corporation has also engaged an HR Advisor of retired Secretary level to expedite promotions of staff persons, who had stagnated at the same posts for as long as 20 years and had little motivation to give their best.

In other organisational reforms, the Doordarshan and AIR zones are being combined into a total of seven zones viz. North Zone, North Central Zone, Central Zone, East Zone, West Zone, South Zone and North-East Zone. At present there are 12 Zones in All India Radio and six Zones in Doordarshan and 5 Zones in Engineering Wing combined for AIR/DD.

In the restructured model, each Zone will have three ADGs with one each for Engineering Projects, Engineering Maintenance and Programmes & Administration. The reorganisation, which makes DD and AIR coterminous for the first time in the history, is aimed at decentralisation and improvement in organisational efficiency.

NEW DELHI: All India Radio and Doordarshan, which provide a platform for political parties to make poll broadcasts before every election, will also organise a maximum of two panel discussions and/or debates on the Kendras/Stations for the forthcoming elections to the state assemblies in Himachal Pradesh and Gujarat.

Each eligible party can nominate one representative to such a programme, but the Election Commission of India will approve the names of coordinators for such panel discussions and debates in consultation with the Prasar Bharati Corporation.

The Commission has, as in previous years, worked out a schedule for the time to be given for poll broadcasts to different parties. The facilities of use of broadcast and telecast time will be available only to National Parties as there are no ‘Recognised State Parties‘ in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh.

The facilities will be available from the Regional Kendra of the All India Radio (AIR) and Doordarshan and in the headquarters of Himachal Pradesh and Gujarat and relayed by other stations within the respective States.

A base time of 45 minutes will be given to each National Party uniformly on the Regional Kendra of Doordarshan network and All India Radio network in the State of Himachal Pradesh and Gujarat.

The additional time to be allotted to the parties has been decided on the basis of the poll performance of the parties in the last assembly election from the State of Himachal Pradesh and Gujarat.

In a single session of broadcast, no party will be allocated more than 15 minutes.

The period of broadcast and telecast will be between the last date of filing the nominations and will end two days before the date of poll in the State of Himachal Pradesh and Gujarat. However, there will be no telecast or broadcast during the 48 hours preceding the close of polls as per specific provisions of the Representation of People Act, 1951.

Prasar Bharati in consultation with the Commission will decide the actual date and time for broadcast and telecast. This will be subject to the broad technical constraints governing the actual time of transmission available with the Doordarshan and All India Radio.

The guidelines prescribed by the Commission for telecast and broadcast will be strictly followed. The parties will be required to submit transcripts and recording in advance. The parties can get this recorded at their own cost in studios, which meet the technical standards prescribed by Prasar Bharati or at the Doordarshan/All India Radio Kendras.

They can, in the alternative, have these recorded in the studios of Doordarshan and All India Radio by advance requests. In such cases, the recordings may be done at the State Capital and at timings indicated by Doordarshan/All India Radio in advance.

Time Vouchers will be available in the denomination of five minutes with one voucher having time allotment from 1 to 4 minutes and the parties will be free to combine them suitably. The allotment of time to different political parties is given in a statement enclosed herewith.

Introduced for the Lok Sabha elections in 1998, the scheme of free broadcasts was extended by the Commission to the State Assemblies held after 1998 and General Elections to the Lok Sabha in 1999, 2004 and 2009.

With the amendments to the Representation of People Act 1951 through "Election and Other Related Laws (Amendment) Act, 2003" and the rules notified thereunder, equitable time sharing for campaigning by recognised political parties on electronic media now has statutory basis.

In exercise of the powers conferred by clause (a) of the Explanation below section 39A of the Representation of People Act, 1951, the Central Government has notified all such broadcasting media which are owned or controlled or financed wholly or substantially by funds provided to them by the Central Government as the electronic media for the purposes of that section. Therefore, the Commission has decided to extend the said scheme of equitable time sharing on electronic media through Prasar Bharati Corporation to the ensuing General Election to the State Legislative Assemblies of Himachal Pradesh and Gujarat 2012.

GENERAL ELECTION TO
THE STATE LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY OF HIMACHAL PRADESH 2012.

Time available to National Parties on Regional Kendras/State Capital Kendras of Doordarshan/All India Radio

GENERAL ELECTION TO
THE STATE LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY OF GUJARAT 2012.

Time available to National/State Parties on Regional Kendras/State Capital Kendras of Doordarshan/All India Radio

LIST OF POLITICAL PARTIES

NEW DELHI: Prasar Bharati is striving to bridge the gap between its annual expenditure and revenue amid government pressures to lean less on it for financial support.

While the government has made it clear that it will only fund the capex requirements and expenses towards salaries, the pubcaster has settled on an operational expenditure capped at Rs 20 billion for the fiscal while its income hovers in the region of Rs 16 billion as it competes against private television and radio broadcasters.

So how does Prasar Bharati cut its financial coat to match the cloth that it has? The pubcaster, which has to look after Doordarshan and All India Radio (AIR), is banking on generating additional revenue of Rs 4 billion with aggressive marketing to promote its clutch of channels and radio stations.

The government had last month approved the financial restructuring of Prasar Bharati, stating that from this year the public broadcaster would have to ensure its operating expenses, other than salaries, are met from revenue earnings. The government had agreed to meet all the expenses of Prasar Bharati towards salary and salary-related expenses from its non-plan account for five years from 2012-13 to 2016-17.

Says Prasar Bharati CEO Jawhar Sircar, "After the Union Cabinet decision, Prasar Bharati?s annual operational expenditure would be in the range of Rs 15 billion to 20 billion, whereas the annual revenue currently is around Rs 16 billion. Therefore, we need to generate additional revenue of Rs 3.5 billion to Rs 4 billion and that is where our renewed emphasis on marketing is important."

Prasar Bharati has decided on an aggressive marketing policy to promote the advertisement revenue and viewership/listenership of Doordarshan and AIR that is expected to bring in an additional Rs 4 billion every year.

Rejuvenated by the recent Cabinet decision providing the pubcaster financial relief of Rs 120 billion after the recommendations of a Group of Ministers, Doordarshan and AIR have decided that marketing and revenue would be their two thrust areas. Prasar Bharati has also put special emphasis on different revenue streams and innovative methods for garnering additional income.

With the Cabinet also approving the transfer of numerous properties and infrastructure across the country - radio stations, television kendras, transmitters - to Prasar Bharati, the pubcaster has decided to leverage these new assets to earn more money.

The Prasar Bharati board, thus, unanimously approved Sircar?s proposal to hire professional marketing executives at market salary levels in order to help the public broadcaster come up with innovative revenue generation plans.

Prasar Bharati board unanimously passed a special resolution to thank Information and Broadcasing Minister Ambika Soni and Finance Minister P Chidambaram for the waiver of Rs 120.71 billion of loans, interest thereon and satellite charges that had accumulated over the years.

The waiver will help Prasar Bharati to pay greater attention to other areas of concern, including the free to air direct-to-home DD Direct Plus, technology (including new media), and its priceless archival treasures, according to Prasar Bharati officials.