New Delhi: The board of the public broadcaster Prasar Bharati Thursday decided to end Doordarshan and All India Radio’s (AIR) subscription with news agencies Press Trust of India (PTI) and United News of India (UNI), ThePrint has learnt. The decision was taken at a board meeting chaired by Prasar Bharati CEO Shashi Shekhar Vempati.
Thankful to the Prasar Bharati Board Members for several key decisions earlier today on new content development, resolving long pending commercial disputes, rationalising expenditure on news agencies and technology investments to better utilise satellite capacity. https://t.co/foQ3tyFQXz
— Shashi S Vempati (@shashidigital) October 15, 2020
Sources in the Prasar Bharati board told ThePrint that the decision was taken to rationalise the DD and AIR’s “expenditure on news agencies”. According to the sources, both DD and AIR had been availing of PTI and UNI services since 2006 without a formal contact and on an adhoc basis.
“DD and AIR will not be using PTI and UNI till fresh proposals are made and evaluated,” a source said.
A second member of the Prasar Bharati board said the broadcaster had held discussions with PTI and UNI, and sought fresh prices from the agencies last year.
“It was decided that Prasar Bharati will now invite fresh proposals for a digital subscription to English text and also related multimedia services from all domestic news agencies,” the source added, saying both PTI and UNI may participate in the exercise when it is notified.
ThePrint reached Vempati through text for comments about the decision, but was yet to receive a response by the time of publishing.
Also Read: Prasar Bharati ‘reviewing’ Rs 6.8 crore/year PTI subscription after China envoy interview
PTI contract under lens since June
Prasar Bharati pays PTI over Rs 6.75 crore for an annual subscription, higher than any other agency. The details of Prasar Bharati’s contract with UNI could not be immediately determined.
ThePrint reached PTI editor-in-chief Vijay Joshi and UNI editor Ashok Upadhyay through messages, but was yet to receive a response.
Prasar Bharati is believed to have begun reviewing its contract with PTI — one of the county’s largest and oldest news agencies — earlier this year, in light of its controversial interview with Chinese ambassador Sun Weidong.
In July, the government had also served a Rs 84.48 crore bill on the news agency for allegedly flouting the terms of the lease agreement under which it was allotted land for its Sansad Marg office in Delhi.
Also Read: Prasar Bharati was a bumblebee that people thought would fly, but it did not
It is strange that a 300 meter high Prasar Bharati (DD and AIR) tower was constructed at a contracted cost of approximately rupees 17 crores at village Gharinda on Grand Trunk Road in Amritsar between 2007 and 2013. Prasar Bharati giving an unconvinceable reason of its being slightly bent, has refused to take it over. Instead another amount of approximately one crore of rupees has been spent on constructing a temporary 100 meter high tower near it and the high powered 20 kilowatt FM transmitter antenna has been installed on it, which neither satisfactorily reaches downtown area of Amritsar nor the downtown area of Lahore. This arrangement is continuing for the past two years. Coming from the top of a 300 meter high antenna, a 20 kilowatt transmitter has a range of 60+ miles or 100 kilometers. But due to the inadequate height of the transmitting antenna the range gets restricted to 30 miles or 50 kilometers. As a result we are covering 60 lakh population in Pakistan and 60 lakhs in India. The full potential is 2.5 crores in Pakistan and 1.5 crores in India. The 300 meter high structure is not unsafe, it is imperfect. The biggest loser is the external service of All India Radio.