New Delhi, Oct 28: With the deadline just a day away, Zee Group's New Media Broadcasting Company Pvt Ltd continued to beat around the bush on whether it's going to submit the bank guarantee for setting up FM Radio stations. Meanwhile, another successful bidder for FM RadioModi Entertainment Network (MEN) said today that it's not signing the FM agreement.Ajay Nijhawan, CEO, MEN, said: ``As we see it now, FM is not going to be a profitable business for us.'' He added: ``We had not envisaged such a high bid when we planned to get into FM.'' Another reason why MEN is not interested in the FM business is that it's got only one centre in Pune because of the high bid. ``We had expected more centres,'' Nijhawan said. The highest bidder, New Media Broadcasting, with 28 FM centres, is likely to back out of the deal too, according to reports. If it doesn't pay the Rs 89.12-crore bank guarantee, New Media has to forgo the advance money worth Rs 45 crore, which it has already paid to the government.Deepak Shourie, CEO, New Media Broadcasting, was not available for comment on whether the company was moving back on its commitment to sign the FM agreement. Neither was any other official in Zee ready to comment on the development.The government, however, was categorical that New Media had not sent out any information indicating that it was backing out of the deal, as of October 28. According to a senior official in the Information and Broadcasting Ministry, the government is going to wait till the evening of October 30 (the deadline for submitting the bank guarantee) to conclude whether New Media and other players who haven't paid their bank guarantee till now are withdrawing or not.The concern that New Media has consistently focussed on for not signing the FM agreement is that there are anomalies in the original tender document. Two weeks ago, New Media along with others such as Reliance and Nimbus had written to the government to ``rectify the anomalies'' in the original tender documents issued to the FM players. Following this request, the government had made changes in the document and also extended the deadline for submitting the bank guarantees. However, New Media, say reports, is planning to move court against the government for a refund of the advance money with a 24 per cent interest on that. According to the official in the I&B ministry who's in charge of FM licences, the government has enough provisions to defend itself in the court, if such a need arises.
