The Information and Broadcasting Ministry has received 14 applications for the e-auction of 266 FM Radio channels in 92 cities in the second batch of Private FM Phase III.
Entertainment Network India Ltd, Ushodaya Enterprises, Sun TV’s Kal Radio and South Asia FM, Mathrubhumi Printing and Publishing, Malayala Manorama, Abhijit Realtors & Infraventures are among the key applicants.
However, other key radio players such as HT Media, Jagran Prakashan’s Radio City, Rajasthan Patrika , Next Radio Ltd kept away from bidding for the second batch due to higher reserve prices.
During the pre-bidding meetings, these FM Radio players had already expressed disappointment with high reserve prices for some of the smaller towns and had said this makes a large chunk of the radio frequencies unviable.
Radio industry had pointed out that reserve price of about ₹ 7.02 crore for most of the Southern region cities and about ₹15.61 crore for smaller cities like Dehradun, Saharanpur, Shahjahanpur and Muzaffarnagar makes them unviable.
The second batch consists of 227 channels in 69 new cities and 39 channels in 23 existing cities, which will help expand FM Radio coverage to smaller cities and towns including Jammu & Kashmir and North Eastern states.
The Ministry ,which published the details of the applicants on its website on Tuesday, said it had rejected the application of Agrani Homes Pvt Ltd as it had failed to comply with certain requirements. It also said that it is still reviewing applications and that publication of this list does not imply that applications will be pre-qualified merely on submission of ownership compliance certificates which companies will need to submit by August 22.
The first batch of FM Radio auctions which was conducted last year fetched the government about ₹ 1157 crore in just the license fees and additional revenues were earned through migration fees from Phase II to Phase III.
Out of 135 channels put up for auction in the first batch, 97 channels were allotted. It saw intense bidding for major cities, several smaller cities had seen lukewarm response.
“High reserve prices as well as caps that restrict broadcasters from bidding more than 15 per cent of the available channels were some of the reasons for lukewarm response,” a Ficci-KPMG report had noted.