Thursday 8 February 2018

Broadcasters not in favour of auctioning TV channel licences

While urging the government to launch more satellites to fulfil the needs of the broadcasting sector, the broadcasters submitted their views on auctioning TV channel licences. They oppose the auction as it is technically not feasible and will lead to a bidding war for procuring licences which will increase the financial burden on TV broadcasters. Here are the views of some of the broadcasters.


Viacom18 said that the operation of satellite broadcasting cannot be compared with the operations of FM radio channels as the spectrum for the latter is rare as against satellite spectrum which is in abundance.

In its submission, Star India said that the successful broadcasting of TV Channels requires coordinated use of the up-linking Space Spectrum, Satellite Transponder Capacity and Downlinking Space Spectrum, which cannot be auctioned together as they are not controlled by the same entity or even the Central Government.

Sony Pictures Networks India submitted that the proposal for auctioning of satellite TV channels as a complete package by way of uplinking from Indian soil to Indian satellite and downlinking in India would be backsliding proposal resulting in economic losses due to the scarcity of satellite transponders and other factors.

According to Siti Networks, the auction of satellite TV channel as a complete package should not be allowed. In case of satellite TV channels even there are different genre and auction of each genre across geographies will not only be a tedious process would derail the whole broadcasting sector, it added.

The industry also said that unlike FM radio, in TV broadcasting multiple channels can run of the same frequency.

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