MUMBAI: Star India CEO Uday Shankar and Aamir Khan will be honoured by the National Commission for Scheduled Castes, Government of India, in recognition of their efforts to create awareness against social discrimination through `Satyamev Jayate.?

The commission will felicitate Shankar and Khan at an award function being organised to mark the International Valmiki Day in New Delhi on 18 October.

Shankar said, "Satyamev Jayate was a natural evolution of content, given Star?s steadfast and widening focus on socially relevant issues. This recognition will spur us to advance in this path of leveraging the power of TV to act as a change agent."

Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde, Social, Justice and Empowerment Minister Mukul Wasnik, Information and Broadcasting Minister Ambika Soni, Delhi Chief Minister Shiela Dixit and other political and civil society leaders who have worked for the cause of social equality will attend the awards function.

Star said in a short span, the show questioned social mores, helped shape mindsets and transcended borders to top popularity charts across the globe. It left an imprint on the minds of people with compelling tales from everyday life.

Satyamev Jayate was a narrative of real stories from across India that touched and inspired millions of people.

NEW DELHI: Taking a cue from the e-auction of 3G which had gone without a hitch and not resulted in the kind of scams or controversies associated with 2G, the Information and Broadcasting Ministry had early this year announced adoption of the mechanism and even tried it out successfully with the e-auctions for Doordarshan?s free to air DD Direct Plus platform.

Carrying forward its decision to e-auction the third phase of 839 FM Channels, the Ministry has now decided to take the help of the Empowered Group of Ministers (eGoM) that finalised the rules for the 2010 3G spectrum auction and slated 2G frequencies.

The eGoM will also reconsider the total number of channels to be auctioned after the recommendation of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) on 19 April to reduce the gap between channels to 400Kkz from the existing 800Khz.

The eGoM will be responsible for the request for proposals to select an e-auctioneer as well as to decide on the fee for migration of Phase two FM licencees to Phase three.

Headed by Finance Minister P. Chidambaram, the eGoM includes Defence minister A K Antony, I and B Minister Ambika Soni, Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal, Law Minister Salman Khurshid, V Narayanasamy, Minister of State in the Prime Minister?s Office, and Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia,

Unlike Phase two in which licences were issued for a 10-year-period in 2006, Phase three licences will expire after 15 years.

But some potential broadcasters feel that with e-auction, the base price for some cities may be too high. The base price for new channels in existing FM phase two cities will be the highest bid amount received for that city in the last auction. In the case of cities being newly bid, the reserve price will be the highest bid price received during phase two for that category of cities in the region.

In the four metros, only Kolkata will not get a new FM channel. Mumbai will get two while Delhi and Chennai will get one each.

Under the current phase two, 245 FM channels are operational in 86 cities, with a population of over 300,000 or more each.

NEW DELHI: Prasar Bharati has appealed with the Service Tax Department Tribunal (CESTAT) for recovery of Rs 1.6028 billion deposited because of a ?gross calculation error?.

Prasar Bharati sources told indiantelevision.com that the pubcaster had claimed that the demand raised was erroneous, but the Service Tax office had issued a final demand notice on 5 May last year which included a demand of Rs 871 million issued to it in May 2009, with interest and penalty under Section 78. This led to the pubcaster depositing the sum of Rs 1.6028 billion.

A demand notice had been received in May 2009 from the Service Tax Department in respect of service tax liabilities relating to the years 2003-2007-08. This ha stated an unpaid amount of Rs 871 million.

The Member (Finance) A K Jain had in 2011 pointed out this gross error in a letter to Information and Broadcasting Minister Ambika Soni.

The sources said due to systemic deficiencies within the organisation prior to 2007-08, regular returns in respect of Service Tax collected were not being filed. As a result, the Service Tax Department raised the demand based on income and expenditure figures in the published accounts without taking into account the benefit of Cenvat Credit admissible to the pubcaster, which was not claimed due to these deficiencies.

Non-receipt of data from field offices and deficiencies in collection of accurate data have been identified as the main reasons for the flaw. The problem was compounded by lack of trained accounts staff and the pubcaster has now appointed a chartered accountants firm.

Returns are now being filed regularly, and the pubcaster has paid a sum of over Rs 4 billion (Rs 4,653,297,477) including about Rs 500 million (Rs 499,011,611) in CENVAT and the rest in cash for the years 2008 to 2012.

NEW DELHI: Pushed by the government in view of the allegations against TAM, the Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) is setting up a Technical Committee to proceed with the operational tasks for putting a television rating mechanism measurement mechanism in place.

The Government has also been informed that BARC has taken action to constitute a BARC Advisory High Table.

Giving this information in Parliament today, Information and Broadcasting Minister Ambika Soni said though BARC had been registered in July 2010 under the Companies Act, the recommendations of the Dr Amit Mitra Committee "have not yet been implemented by them".

She said BARC was registered "after constant persuasion by the Government" only after the government consistently pushed the Indian Broadcasting Foundation (IBF) which had to set up BARC.

Soni reiterated that the Ministry has been regularly reviewing the progress made by BARC towards setting up a transparent and credible TRP measurement system in India.

In June last year, the Minister had told Parliament that BARC had assured the Government that it would file its first TRP report by July 2013.

The Mitra Committee in its report in November 2010 had said BARC would be the main body and organisations like TAM will function under it for the purpose of ratings.

Soni had then said while accepting the report that the number of peoplemeters could be increased from the present 8,000 to 30,000 in the first stage and at least 50,000 later.

New Delhi: The News Broadcasters Association (NBA) on Thursday urged Information and Broadcasting Minister Ambika Soni to order an independent audit of the systems of TAM Media Research, the agency that provides television ratings service.

In a letter to Soni, the NBA has said the audit should be conducted by a reputed third-party within a certain time-frame to evaluate and measure the TAM systems. The audit report should be made public.

The letter follows questions being raised about TAM ratings following a case filed by the New Delhi Television Ltd (NDTV) in New York, against TAM and its parents the Nielsen group and the Kantar Group.

The NBA has also sought a direction to TAM to suspend reporting of its ratings data until the audit is completed.

The NBA has urged Soni to take "efficient" steps to correct deficiencies in the system and to help build a robust, transparent and dependable ratings system. The ministry should continue to engage and work together on this issue and give the industry and all its stakeholders - broadcasters, advertisers, distribution companies - the confidence to be able to consume data derived from such system.

"We believe these measures and initiatives from the Government will go a long way in addressing this long pending concern and we offer you our complete support in this journey," the NBA has said.

The NBA drew attention to the "Code of Practice in relation to Measurement Based Studies" adopted by it and adhered to by its member broadcasters. The Code was formulated and approved so that the use of measurement based studies by member broadcasters is carried out in line with highest ethical commercial practices.

"As you are aware TAM has been reporting viewership data to the industry despite serious concerns over their systems and methodology of measuring TV audiences. Data continues to be skewed and is seriously affecting broadcasters and their business."

"While Indian Broadcasting Foundation was instrumental in the formation of the Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC), the responsibility of implementing BARC will see the light of the day only if the ISA and the AAAI jointly take serious efforts to launch it in the immediate future. Content and its quality no longer is a creative judgment or product of talent or ability but has been severely compromised with the sole aim of gaining viewership ratings," the letter said.