The News Broadcasters & Digital Association (NBDA) yesterday flagged the twin issues of a contentious bidding process for limited slots on Doordarshan FreeDish and the audience measurement data generated by BARC India, amongst others, in a meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

According to several people in the know, the NBDA delegation, led by its president and India TV co-founder Rajat Sharma, raised the above mentioned two issues forcefully as it felt it was impacting their businesses in a major way.

A statement released by the NBDA, an industry body of TV news channels, after the meeting said in general that the delegation informed the Prime Minister about the health of the news broadcast industry, constraints, problems, and challenges faced in the era of digital revolution, which was severely impacting the growth of the ‘news’ genre.

Though PM Modi did not offer any immediate assurances, the sources pointed out, he listened attentively to the points put on the table by the representatives of some of the biggest news broadcasting companies.

The NBDA delegation was also accompanied by Minister for Information & Broadcasting Ashwini Vaishnaw.

The DD FreeDish matter has not only been irking news broadcasters but other media and entertainment industry stakeholders like private sector DTH players who have been publicly stating that though FreeDish —managed by publicly funded national broadcaster Prasar Bharati — competes with them, but remains outside any regulatory regime, which creates an uneven level playing field.

In its most recent submission to regulator TRAI on the formulation of a proposed National Broadcast Policy earlier this year, the NBDA while appreciating the work done by Prasar Bharati, submitted that “the consideration for the private players and a public service broadcaster such as Prasar Bharati would be very different from each other”.

Pointing out that while the public service broadcaster acts akin to a private broadcaster in terms of commercial or business objectives, a concern of NBDA was that the Prasar Bharti prioritises “revenue maximisation through a less than transparent auction process relating to DD Free Dish”.

“Considering the opaque practices observed in auction processes, it is critical for TRAI to advocate for transparency and accountability to prevent the creation of artificial scarcity. The non-disclosure of slot numbers during auctions, leads to market distortions and hinder fair competition,” the NBDA had submitted to regulator TRAI.

Meanwhile, others from NBDA who attended the meeting with PM Modi included Anuradha Prasad Shukla, CMD of New24 Broadcast India Ltd; Rahul Joshi, Managing Director TV 18 Broadcast Ltd; Kalli Purie Bhandal, Vice-Chairperson & MD of TV Today Network Ltd.; Dhruba Mukherjee, Director ABP Network Ltd; Anil Kumar Malhotra, Advisor at Zee Media Corporation Ltd; Sanjay Pugalia, Director of New Delhi Television Ltd; I. Venkat, Director of Eenadu Television Pvt. Ltd.; R Mahesh Kumar, Managing Director of Sun TV Network Ltd.; Varun Kohli, COO, News Broadcasting Business at Bennett Coleman & Co Ltd and Annie Joseph, NBDASecretary-General.