Bidding in A and A-plus cities got the government a total of around Rs 540 crore last week. Another 3 rounds of bidding are scheduled over the next weeks.
NEW DELHI: The second day of financial bidding for FM radio fetched the government close to Rs 84 crore. The bidding was for cities and towns in the north, barring those in A and A-plus categories.
Bidding in A and A-plus cities got the government a total of around Rs 540 crore last week. Another three rounds of bidding are scheduled over the next few weeks.
On Friday, 104 bids were received for 76 frequencies in 21 northern cities across eight states of the country.
Out of the 104 bids, 63 were qualified. The Anil Ambani group’s Adlabs emerged a star once again, having won stations in 19 cities. It bid as high as Rs 15 crore for a station in Chandigarh.
Adlabs is also the only company to win a station in Srinagar. It bought the Srinagar frequency for Rs 60 lakh. As Adlabs bagged seven stations in A and A-plus cities, the company is now sitting on 26 frequencies. It aspires to bag several more stations in the subsequent rounds of bidding, it is learnt.
South Asia FM, from the Chennai-headquartered Sun group, was yet another major player on day 2 of bidding. It bagged 10 stations on Friday and last week it got seven, taking its total tally to 17. Another group firm, Kal, got two stations on the first day of bidding. Since Sun already has four FM stations, it now has a total of 23, with many more to go.
However, the government has set a limit for companies to acquire FM radio stations. No company can acquire more than 15 % of the total frequencies available, according to government norms. In the current phase of FM privatisation, 337 frequencies have been thrown open to bidding. There are already 22 stations from the first phase of privatisation.
According to an industry insider, companies always have the option of surrendering some “unprofitable” stations if the total tally exceeds the government limit of 15 per cent.
Both Adlabs and the Sun group are fast approaching the 15 per cent cap, if the current trend is anything to go by. Consider this. Both Adlabs and South Asia FM bid for all 21 stations on Friday.
Commenting on Adlabs run, Reliance Entertainment president Rajesh Sawhney said, “FM radio will be lapped up by people in smaller cities and it will not be a big challenge to get local advertisers on board.”
Bhaskar group’s Synergy Media also performed well as it won seven more stations on Friday. It’s again been able to go to its publication centres.
Earlier, it had bagged four stations. Zee group, which was disqualified last week as it had bid quite low, has been able to open its tally on day two. Zee is represented by Pan India in the FM radio sphere.
Among other highlights of the day, media company Jagran (Puran Media) has managed to get many stations after last week’s failure. It got seven stations on Friday in some critical markets. Bennett Coleman’s Entertainment Network India Ltd lost out on a big market-Chandigarh-today.
That is being seen as a considerable loss as Chandigarh is a prominent market in the north.
Meanwhile, Hindustan Times did not bid at all for the northern cities. That’s perhaps an indication that HT would like to remain a player rooted in metros and A category cities. HT had bid as high as Rs 35 crore on day one of bidding for Mumbai. That is the highest bid so far.
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