Explained: News channels win DD Freedish slots at the cost of entire genre

From boycott calls by news broadcasters’ bodies to some news channels breaking ranks for securing a slot on DD Freedish, high drama played out at the 67th e-auction for MPEG-2 slots of the Prasar Bharati-owned free-to-air DTH platform. 

The auction that concluded on Monday after running for a record eight straight days fetched 66% more revenue for the pubcaster at Rs 1,071 crore, over the previous year’s revenue of Rs 645 crore.

While the national broadcaster rejoiced at the huge success powered by the revised methodology, the embattled news genre was left to bleed further. 

Individual interests failed the on-paper unity among news broadcasters however superficial it was.

BestMediaInfo.com had earlier reported how NBF president Arnab Goswami, who signed the letter sent to I&B Minister Anurag Thakur opposing the revised auction process, broke ranks and started bidding along with TV9 Bharatvarsh on Thursday under Bucket C reserved for the Hindi news genre.

Sensing the game playing out in real-time, the likes of News18, Zee News and NDTV India also joined the bidding war.

Many NBDA members were sitting out until the end of the auction on the fourth day but they had no option but to participate in the bidding on the next day.

A senior executive from a news broadcaster which participated in the first round of auctions told BestMediaInfo.com that everyone was logged in and they noticed bids coming as soon as the e-auction for Bucket C started.

“The bidding was fierce and the first slot was sold to News18 India for Rs 19.85 crore. This means that other broadcasters chose to quit at Rs 19.8 crore. It was crazy and it reminded me of the 2021 auctions when News18 India crossed Rs 22 crore. This time also, it was close to three times of the base or reserve price of Rs 7 crore,” said the executive.

After losing the bidding war with News18 India, Republic Bharat picked the second slot for Rs 16.55 crore and then other three news channels – TV9 Bharatvarsh (Rs 14.55 crore), Zee News (Rs 15.5 crore), NDTV India (Rs 16.55 crore) – also managed to picked up slots.

All the channels bidding in the first round paid more than double the base price. 

However, the news channels bidding in the third round of auctions under Bucket A paid a little over the base price of Rs 13 crore.

On Sunday, Times Now Navbharat, News Nation and Aaj Tak picked up slots by paying 15-18% more than the base price.

However, sensing that the slots would fill towards the end, India TV, Good News Today and Bharat24 had to pay up to 43% more on Monday in order to secure the last few slots.

In all, 12 news channels paid close to Rs 200 crore, which was almost double the price they paid last year.

“The channels who are heavily dependent on the viewership coming from rural markets or free platform were the ones who broke ranks and set a benchmark which turned out to be unaffordable for a couple of news channels such as News24, India News and Bharat Express,” said a senior executive at a news broadcaster, under conditions of anonymity.

The chart below explains the viewership pattern on “pay” and “free” platforms for the news channels.

How will news broadcasters recover increased cost on Freedish?

Several experts told BestMediaInfo.com that no news channel could afford missing DD Freedish right before the 2024 general elections, looking at the prospective political advertising.

“No advertiser would consider an ad rate hike on account of overspending on Freedish. The only rescue for them is political advertising, that too up to some extent, as the political parties are either moving to digital or paying lesser ad rates on TV,” said the sales head of a news channel.

An industry observer told BestMediaInfo.com that the profitable channels would have to bear the cut in their profits whereas loss making channels would have to cut their operational expenses to mitigate the additional financial burden of over Rs 10 crore compared to last year.

Info@BestMediaInfo.com