Producers scramble for slots as Aaj Tak departs from DD

While the broadcaster decline to comment whether Nandy would be admitted to the fold or not, much will depend upon who promises to pay the best to DD-Metro. Pritish Nandy Communications (PNC) was the only company that came forward when DD had called for bidders to market the Olympics and red-faced officials, after confiscating its minimum guarantee amount of Rs 7.5 crore, had to market the event on their own.

This time around, officials are confident there will be more players. The channel’s non-prime time (between 10 pm and 12.30 pm) will go under the hammer tomorrow when Mandi House officials fix the floor price at Rs 26.5 crore. “We are expecting the figures to go higher this time,” officials at Mandi House said.

Besides PNC, Creative Eye has also shown willingness to take the non-prime time slot. DD had earlier failed to auction the 11 pm to 12.30 pm slot despite inviting bids.

It was Kerry Packer who had come forward with Rs 121 crore to bag a three-hour slot and a year’s contract on DD-Metro when the channel’s fortunes had dipped to an all-time low of Rs 45 crore last year, from Rs 140 crore in previous years.

For the early morning slot of 7.15 am to 8 pm, vacated by Subah Aaj Tak, producers are already queueing up to take over. According to sources in DD, Rajat Sharma, Ramesh Sharma, Vinod Dua and Rajeev Shukla head the pack of people interested in this slot. “We would like to turn this slot into a composite breakfast show and raise its telecast fee from the present rate of Rs 15,000 for half-an-hour, especially if we are going to hand it over to a producer,for a year,” sources in Mandi House said, adding they were also going to increase the time band to an hour.

As for Aaj Tak parting ways three months before the contract actually came to an end, it has less to do with the launch of a 24-hour news channel about to make its debut on December 31, and more with DD’s greed for money. We can get more out of entertainment than news on the Metro channel is DD’s logic.