After having been forced to lift the ban on commissioned programmes months ago, Doordarshan has finally got around to inviting proposals for this category from private producers. The proposals have been invited, mainly, for DD Bharati and the regional kendras. Proposals for daily soaps, sitcoms, chat shows, talk shows, etc. will not be entertained as Doordarshan has a large backlog of such programmes under the sponsored category. A budget of Rs. 10 crore has been budgeted for the Central commissioning and another Rs. 10 crore for the kendras.

All commissioned programmes on Doordarshan (except on the North-East and Kashmir) were banned in January last, after DD News was shut down, as a result of a number of allegations of large scale corruption in awarding programmes to producers. Even the Parliamentary Panel indicted Doordarshan for wasting huge amounts of money on mediocre programmes. Now, the Prasar Bharati Board has been forced to re-introduce commissioned programmes as there were no sponsors for programmes of public social interest. All contenders for commissioned programmes will have to pay a non-refundable processing fee of Rs. 25,000 under Central commissioning and Rs. 15,000 under Regional commissioning. All proposals will be processed by the Evaluation and Costing Committees at DD headquarters and by the Costing Committees of the respective regional kendras. Proposals shortlisted by the Evaluation Committees will be put up to the Costing Committees.

To avoid charges of favouritism and corruption, applicants may be asked to present relevant documents to support the authenticity of their production facilities. Prasar Bharati has also made it mandatory for applicants, along with their creative team, to personally be available for presentations on their proposals at any stage of the processing by Doordarshan.

Doordarshan is also expected to invite proposals under the royalty category soon. It has already budgeted Rs. 21 crore for this purpose. A separate invitation will be made for off-the-shelf programmes (ready made programmes) for which Doordarshan has made an allocation of Rs. 11 crore.

And, as was anticipated on the basis of recent happenings in the group, Subhash Chandra, Chairman, Zee Telefilms would now have a hands-on involvement with the day to day affairs of the network. Apurva Purohit, President of the Zee TV channel, Prashant Sanwal, Director-Alpha Channels, Laxmi N. Goel, Director-Zee News, Yogesh Radhakrishnan, Director-Zee Music and Zee Cinema, Jagjit Singh Kohli, Director-ETC brands and Ajay Trigunayat, Vice President-Zee English and Zee MGM would now be directly reporting to Subhash Chandra.