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NEW
DELHI: The public broadcaster's gross commercial revenues
have taken a beating this year.
In a reply to a query in the Upper House of Parliament (Rajya
Sabha), information and broadcasting minister Sushma Swaraj
today disclosed that Prasar Bharati's gross commercial revenues
for 2001-2002 had slipped to Rs 6152.1 million from Rs 6375.1
million the earlier year.
The pubcaster, which had netted revenues of Rs 5971.9 million
in 1999-2000, had registered an impressive growth last year,
but has not been able to sustain the same this fiscal.
CABLE TV MARKET: On whether the Prasar Bharati proposed
to enter cable TV market, Swaraj said it had recently signed
a memorandum of understanding with MTNL for cooperation
in exploring new business opportunities and utilisation
of the fibre optic network for carriage of Doordarshan services.
PLAN TO REGULATE CABLE AND TV PROGRAMMES: On the government's
proposal to regulate cable and television programmes, the
minister said that the government had constituted an inter-ministerial
committee to go into specific complaints regarding any programme
not being in conformity with the prescribed programme code.
She said the committee would consist of officials from the
I&B ministry, home, defence, external affairs and law. On
cases that had been taken cognisance of by the Press Council,
Swaraj said the media watchdog had during the period from
1 April 1998 to March 31, 2001 examined 2,452 complaints
and upheld 352 of them.
FILM FINANCE: She also said that under the government's
new plans, the Reserve Bank of India as well as public sector
banks may soon finance films launched by producers with
a good track record, subject to certain conditions. Under
the scheme, Swaraj said producers would be required to finance
25 per cent of the project cost as promoters' contribution
and could also tie up with distributors to receive advances
as is the usual practice.
She said bank advances would be to the tune of 35 to 40
per cent and this could be increased to 50 per cent on merits
under the new guidelines.
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