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Doordarshan records sharp rise in revenue

Doordarshan today claimed a growth of 47.21 per cent, with its commercial and advertising revenue rising to Rs 6.10 billion during 1999-2000.

Rajeeva Ratna Shah, Prasar Bharati chief executive officer, said that this is the highest-ever revenue generated by Doordarshan, since the last high was Rs 5.77 billion in 1996-97.

The commercial revenue had then shown a decline: with Rs 4.90 billion in 1997-98 and Rs 4.14 billion in 1998-99, showing a decline of 15.5 per cent.

The flagship channel of Doordarshan, DD 1, had touched an all-time high with a revenue of Rs 3.18 billion, the last high being Rs 2.84 billion in 1996-97.

Shah claimed that television audience measurement, or TAM, in 27 cities for the prime time band had shown an increase of 44 per cent over a period of six months, from 5.47 million viewers in August last to 7.9 million in January this year.

The study showed that an average viewer spent 54 minutes a day watching DD 1 compared to only seven minutes watching Zee or Sony television.

Meanwhile, Shah announced that Prasar Bharati will continue to get non-plan support despite the government decision to treat Prasar Bharati as a full-fledged autonomous body with effect from this financial year.

According to the decision, the public broadcaster is to receive a grant-in-aid amounting to Rs 9.63 billion to cover the gap in its resources in meeting its revenue expenditure and will for the first time get a loan of Rs 1.70 billion to finance its capital expenditure.

The total budgetary support for Prasar Bharati has been fixed at Rs 11.30 billion.

Shah said the revenue generation in 1999-2000 was significant considering Doordarshan was expecting a revenue of Rs 5 billion during 1999-2000, having netted a revenue of Rs 3.64 billion till January this year.

He revealed that live reportage of four cricketing events -- World Cup, Sharjah, India New Zealand series, and BCCI cricket events -- had brought in a total revenue of Rs 15.98 billion.

He, however, admitted that the revenue of the metro channel DD 2 had dropped with a revenue of Rs 460 million compared to Rs 786 million last year.

But he said that the Calcutta, Thiruvananthapuram and Lucknow regional channels generated all-time highs with revenues of Rs 258 million, Rs 201 billion, and Rs 414 billion, respectively.

UNI

Business