According to the tender issued by Prasar Bharati, bids have been invited for the first, second and fourth Friday slots at 9:30 p.m. on DD-I (it already has a deal with B4U for the third Friday); every Saturday at 10:30 p.m. on DD-I; and every Saturday and Sunday at 3:00 p.m. on DD-II. Prasar Bharati will receive the bids up to February 23, 2001. According to theofficial setting a floor price is a recent practice, which has failed to draw a good response from film producers. The official adds: ``Last year, we had set a floor price of Rs 1 crore and were unable to get any films.'' So, out of sheer desperation, this time Prasar Bharati has refrained from setting any such floor price. To make it a sustainable venture, Prasar Bharati will offer free commercial time of 1800 seconds per film on Friday and 1500 seconds on Saturday for the DD-I channel. Similarly, on DD-II, free commercial time of 1000 seconds will be offered during the Saturday film and another 1000 seconds during the Sunday film. Says a DD official that it's up to the marketing agents of the film producers to strike a deal with advertisers for the commercial time on DD-I and DD-II during the film slots.

As per the tender document, the same marketing agents would approach Prasar Bharati with the bids for films on behalf of the film producers. The marketing agents would pay the film producers out of the money earned from selling the free commercial time (FCT) offered by DD. And, if a marketing agent sells more than the offered FCT, for the excess spots he will be charged at the spot buy rate of his bid plus 50 per cent of the same. At present, Prasar Bharati is in a revenue-sharing deal with the National Film Development Corporation (NFDC) for showing films on DD-I and DD-II, wherein Prasar Bharati keeps 70 per cent and NFDC 30 per cent.

But, says the Prasar Bharati official that NFDC is not able to offer the latest and the best. Also, there's hardly any effort on the part of NFDC to sell commercial spots on DD, the official adds. So, along with the declining quality of films, DD is also losing out on revenues because of the deal with NFDC. In fact, NFDC owes a hefty amount to Prasar Bharati for this deal.According to the Prasar Bharati official, the intention now is to get good films, with emphasis on `quality'. On how DD will handle the competition from other channels such as Star, Zee, Sony and Sahara, the official says that DD would have to devise ways to survive in the race when most players are keen on showing films. To begin with, Prasar Bharati has advised the marketing agents to get films not older than five years for the Friday night slots on DD-I. For the Saturday night slots on the channel, only well-known films of 70s, 80s and 90s will be accepted. For DD-II, however, Prasar Bharati has asked for Jubilee films of 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s and those which can be projected as thematic retrospective.