It was music to the ears of media bigwigs Radio Mirchi, Anil Ambani's Adlabs, South Asia FM, Times Group's Entertainment Network India Limited, Rajasthan Patrika, Jagran and the Bhaskar groups.
NEW DELHI: It was music to the ears of media bigwigs Radio Mirchi, Anil Ambani's Adlabs, South Asia FM, Times Group's Entertainment Network India Limited, Rajasthan Patrika, Jagran and the Bhaskar groups as they bagged their share of 76 FM frequencies that were up for grabs in the second round of bidding on Friday for 21 North Indian cities and towns.
Radio Mirchi successfully bid for Jalandhar and Benaras, Adlabs, which applied for all 21 cities, got in 19, including
Banaras and Jagran got in six cities.
South Asia FM, which is part of the Sun TV, was successful in 10 of the 21 cities it bid for.
Jagran and Bhaskar got six each. The Bhaskar group was successful in Jodhpur, Jalandhar, Kota, Chandigarh and Amritsar.
Rajastan Patrika, which applied for five got two -- Kota and
Udaipur.
Today's bidding gave the government Rs 80.76 crore as against to the Rs 500 crore in the first bids last Friday.
The highest bid was for Patiala -- Rs 1.26 crore by Adlabs.
BAG Film bid for seven but got four -- Shimla, Patiala,
Karnal and Hissar.
In Srinagar, Adlabs was the only successful bidder. Only two bids had been received for four frequencies in the city.
Here, South Asia FM did not qualify because its bid was less than the one-time entry fee. To qualify, the difference between the highest and the lowest bid should not be more than 25 per cent.
Major bidders today were Adlabs, South Asia FM, Rajasthan
Patrika, the Bhaskar group, Synergy and ENIL.
A representative of BAG Film said operations of FM radio stations in small cities and towns would not be a problem because there is no dearth of business in these places.
''We will break even very fast,'' he said.
After finalising deals for the metros and major cities in the first round of the government's privatisation drive of FM radio last Friday, 76 frequencies in Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan,
Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh and Chandigarh were up for grabs in today's bidding.
The bidding under the Phase-II of the FM radio privatization was for 21 cities, 15 B category towns, 61 C category towns and 10 D category towns.
HT Media, Adlabs, ENIL and Radio Mid Day (a joint venture between BBC and Mid Day Multimedia) were among the winners of the first round for 64 frequencies in 13 A and A+ cities such as Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Surat, Pune, Nagpur, Jaipur, Lucknow and Kanpur.
Times' ENIL had bagged all the seven stations it went for while Radio Mid Day managed to get six stations. HT came up most aggressive of the bidders and its whopping Rs 35 crore for Mumbai was highest in the first round.
Under the Phase-II of the FM radio privatisation, the government is selling 338 radio stations in 91 cities and towns. A total of 85 private players, mostly media companies and some real estate developers, have been shortlisted for bidding. The Information and Broadcasting Ministry had invited pre-qualification bids in September.
The new broadcasting policy guidelines issued in July allow private companies to provide local news and weather reports through high fidelity transmission. The question of advertisements is under the consideration of the government.
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