Catering only to Hindi speaking regions, DD Free Dish ignores the rest of India

DD Free Dish, India's only free direct-to-home (DTH) service owned and operated by public service broadcaster Prasar Bharati (Doordarshan), appears to have become a Hindi language dominant platform. Despite being a national initiative funded equally by viewers from the East, West, North and South, this government-owned DTH platform mainly features Hindi language channels with just a handful of DD regional channels that have virtually zero viewership.

According to industry observers, the fact that DD Free Dish has allowed itself to be manipulated into a Hindi- and North-specific platform implies a lack of national vision. This is evident from the fact that of the 60 channels (on the DD Free Dish platform) over 50 channels address Hindi speaking region in the North, including Punjab and Uttar Pradesh (UP).

Taking it to be a national platform, the Directorate of Advertising And Visual Publicity (DAVP) releases advertisements at regular intervals on DD Free Dish channels. In reality though, none of their communications are actually reaching the audiences in the South, East and Western India.

"It's a complete waste of funds earmarked on such advertisements as national messages of the government or for that matter the prime minister aren't reaching the masses, except those in the northern belt of India," said an industry expert.

The DD Free Dish policy for accommodating private channels was framed about seven years ago and the move was initially seen as a successful initiative to garner revenue for state broadcaster Prasar Bharati. However, in mid last year, it became clear that DD Free Dish had transformed into a vehicle to promote private channels with up to Rs 800 crore revenues per channel against an auction price of Rs 8 crore. That's a realisation of just 1 per cent of the revenue potential of the channel with 99 per cent going to the private broadcasters.

The auctions were subsequently stopped in August 2017 after realising that apart from the promotion of private channels, some of which garnered the highest Broadcast Audience Research Council India (BARC) ratings in India, the ratings of DD channels collapsed simultaneously to almost zero. All the eyeballs thus shifted away from the national broadcaster to the private channels.

The DD Free Dish platform with free to air (FTA) channels is also not in consonance with Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) tariff order and TRAI interconnection orders that have come into force. The distributors under the new tariff regime have been mandated to offer 100 FTA channels for a base tariff of about Rs 120 per month. This pricing is basically aimed at helping distributors cover their costs on cable television and direct-to-home (DTH) installations. It also benefits viewers allowing them to select additional channels at a-la-carte rates.

"However, the DD Free Dish platform with 60 FTA channels, expected to extend to over 120 in near future, would nullify the TRAI tariff order as the platform would offer 120 FTA channels at zero cost against Rs 120 per month or Rs 1,440 per year plus taxes by private operators. Moreover, the viewers in the south will be disadvantaged by the fact that they will receive no such benefits," said a top executive from one of the media firms.

The results of this distorted TRAI tariff implementation are already visible. For any pay channel which is on DD Free Dish, distributors (DTH and cable operators) are withholding payments citing its free availability (on DD Free Dish). The entire Pay TV ecosystem is under threat even as the new tariff regime is to come into effect, feel industry players.

Among various benefits from DD Free Dish was the ability to propagate Indian television and culture with the country's regional neighbours viz Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Maldives and Nepal. It was also set to play a crucial role in bringing a sense of national cohesion by addressing the far-flung communities in the Northeast (Arunachal Pradesh, Tripura, Assam), in the South (Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka) and in the East (Odisha and West Bengal).

"This could have only happened if there were channels of interest for these regions amongst the bouquets on the national platform," said an industry veteran.

However, there is not a single channel that addresses India's regional ambitions or to bind its distant communities except a sole DD channel for each region. Besides, there are no FTA regional channels on the platform to communicate national messages about a disaster, natural calamities, national events and so on.

"The myopic policies of the brass of Prasar Bharti have created a Frankenstein's monster of a platform which has killed its own DD channels and helped create an ecosystem for channels of only Hindi region to make astronomical profits," said the industry veteran.

Technology is another lagging area for the DD Free Dish platform that features the outdated MPEG-2 transmission with only 16 channels per transponder of 36 MHz as compared to private broadcasters who derive 25 channels.

"Over the last eight years all set-top boxes (STBs) sold natively support MPEG-4 technologies and DD Free Dish could have migrated to MPEG-4 about three years ago without loss in viewership with over 25 channels per transponder taking the capacity to over 100 channels within the same satellite resources," said a top broadcasting industry executive, adding that this would have allowed some regional private channels to find place on the platform.

"However, it is apparent that the policies of DD Free Dish and Prasar Bharti cannot easily come out of the bureaucratic fishnet which has now snared the entire nation in a media black hole specifically for the regional communities," said the executive.