Prasar Bharati is, hereby, notifying further amendment to the “Policy guidelines for allotment of slots of DD Free Dish Direct-to-Home Platform to satellite TV channels”, notified on 15.01.2019 and as earlier amended vide addendum dated 30.03.2019 (hereinafter called as “Policy Guidelines”), in pursuant to approval of Prasar Bharati Board in its 157th meeting held on 23.10.2019 as follows:

1. Short title, extent, and commencement.
i) These amendments shall be called as “Policy guidelines for allotment of slots of DD Free Dish Direct-to-Home Platform to satellite TV channels (Second amendments), 2019”.
ii) These shall come into force from 01.11.2019.

2. In the Policy Guidelines, for sub-items i & iii under item (a) of Clause

3.2.1, the following items are substituted as under:
i) BUCKET A+: All GEC (Hindi) Channels
iii) BUCKET B: All Music(Hindi) Channels, Sports (Hindi) Channels, Movies (Bhojpuri), GEC (Bhojpuri), Teleshopping (Hindi)
3. In the Policy Guidelines, the existing sub-item iii under item A of Clause 3 shall be substituted as under:
“(iii) Prasar Bharati Management is authorized to make the decision on reservation for the genre, and on the number of slots to be reserved deemed to be in public interest.”
4. In the Policy Guidelines, for the sub-clause 4.11 under clause 4, the sub-clause is substituted, namely:-

“ 4.11 Prasar Bharati will make a provision to reserve some slots in the MPEG-4 stream for
(i) placement of foreign Public Service Broadcasting Channels, (a)

on reciprocal basis/barter basis, (b) on an invitation basis for strategic collaborations, subject to availability of slots and the Broadcasters willingness to match the last highest bid for MPEG-4 slot;
(ii) placement of co-branded channels on case to case basis;
(iii) expansion into HD; &
(iv) placement of DD Regional Channels.

The Prasar Bharati Management will be authorized to take a decision on such a reservation. However, the placement of co-branded channels on case to case basis will be with the approval of the Prasar Bharati Board.”

5. In the policy Guidelines, for sub-item ii of item r of Annexure -2, the following sub-item is substituted, namely;-

“ ii. In case, five or more vacant slots are available, then one slot will be reserved for each Bucket in the first round. In case no application is received for a particular Bucket, then there will be no reserved slot in that Bucket. After the completion of the first-round auction of one slot so reserved in Buckets, the remaining slots will be auctioned Bucket-wise starting from A+ and will progressively go down from Bucket A+ to Bucket D till such time there are no bidders in a given bucket or there is no vacant slot left.

If the number of vacant slots is less than five, the auction will proceed from Bucket A+ downwards, without observing any reservation of slots in any Bucket, and will progressively go from Bucket A+ to Bucket D till such time there are no bidders in a given bucket or there is no vacant slot left.

The slot fee will be determined on a pro-rata basis using the previous highest bid price for that bucket."