‘Get more ads’ is the not-so-subtle message of Union Minister for Information and Broadcasting Smriti Irani, who urged state-run broadcaster Doordarshan to create quality content and improve revenue generation through advertisements.
The minister’s remarks, at the inaugural ceremony of the 24th International Conference and Exhibition on Terrestrial and Satellite Broadcasting, in New Delhi, comes amidst the announcement that the total advertising spend for Doordarshan is expected to grow from 9.6 per cent last year to 12.5 per cent this year.
For the year ended March 31, 2017, Doordarshan’s net revenue rose to ₹827.51 crore, surpassing its annual target of ₹800 crore.
Government advertisement fetched ₹318.06 crore, while corporate ads around ₹157.59 crore during the year.
With India set to have 530 million smartphone users by the end of this year, second only to China, Irani pointed out that more than 40 per cent of the content consumption happens online, and urged the broadcaster to enhance its reach.
Noting that private broadcasters had grown at the cost of Prasar Bharati, given its Free Dish platform (DD Free Dish is India’s first and one and only Free-to-Air (FTA) Direct-To-Home (DTH) service from Doordarshan), Irani exhorted the audience to come up with examples as to how they could leverage infrastructure already in place so that good content could be made available, which could result in increased ad spend, given the sheer reach of Prasar Bharati.