As many as 174 ‘dead’ or now non-operational agencies and over 300 government bodies, ad-agencies and production houses together owe R450 crore to public broadcaster Doordarshan.

While the now defunct agencies owe R50 crore to DD, various government and advertising agencies owe another R100 crore to the public broadcaster. The balance of R300 crore of outstanding dues against several leading production houses is under arbitration, taking the overall outstanding dues of Doordarshan beyond R450 crore.

This is important as the revenue deficit of Prasar Bharati has mounted to over R800 crore in the last three years. A parliamentary panel in its recent report predicted an “immense financial crisis” for the public broadcaster if it did not take immediate steps to curb the deficit and increase its revenues.

Among the agencies against whom the outstanding dues still remain to be recovered include names like McCann, TBWA, FCB Ulka, O&M, ONGC, IOC, RBI, LIC, Nimbus, Film Craft, Plus Channel and CWG organising committee and several departments of various state governments. Sources say several of the ‘dead’ agencies acted as fronts for Mumbai-based content producers who did not clear the dues on time and later shut shop and disappeared. These dead agencies together owe R50 crore to Doordarshan.

According to sources, several of the outstanding amounts have been due for over a decade now wherein companies made content for Doordarshan on credit and did not repay even after making money from the show by way of commercials.

As a result, Doordarshan has frozen the accreditation status of hundreds of these defaulters while initiating legal action against them. As many as 94 such production houses and agencies are under arbitration to recover around R300 crore. These include Film Craft (R29.89 crore), Starcon India (R27.7 crore), Numero Uno (R24.6 crore), Aarambh Advtg & Marketing (R24.6 crore) Multi Channel (R19 crore) and Plus Channel (R10.19 crore).

Among the government departments and organisations, the CWG organising committee alone owes R20.57 crore, the single largest amount owed to Doordarshan by any one agency.

In other cases, the amounts are running into a few thousand rupees to several lakhs. These include the department of public relations of the Kerala state government, that owes R97.69 lakh and IRDA which owes R88.31 lakh. Collectively, the various departments belonging to the state governments of Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Jammu & Kashmir owe around R8-10 crore to Doordarshan.

|||||| Thank you for your interest.||||||