FM: Prov winning price now 100% more than total reserve price

Emerging cities are still seeing some interest from FM players, while the action is diminishing in metros and mini metros. Perhaps, the stations have reached their optimum limit on bidding in those cities. A school of thought is that channels that have lost bids in bigger markets are now perhaps focusing on smaller cities with future potential.

Varanasi, Nashik and Shillong are the three cities applicable for 5% price rise today and have excess demand. Interestingly, there was no excess demand in Nashik and Shillong yesterday. The cities with 1% applicable price rise today are Kozhikode and Guwahati.

As per the official communique for the I&B Ministry, At the close of the 17^thday of bidding, 93 channels in56 cities became provisional winning channels with cumulative provisional winning price of about Rs 1116 Crore against their aggregate reserve price of about Rs458 Crore. Thus the summation of provisional winning prices surpassed the cumulative reserve price of the corresponding 93channels by Rs 657.59 crore or 143.5%. Overall, cumulative provisional winning price became more than double the reserve price of the entire first batch. It exceeded the total reserve price of the first batch i.e. Rs 550.18 Crore by Rs 565.66Crore or 102.8%.

 The Auction Activity Requirement (AAR) is 100%. It was increased from 90% after 59^th Round on 14^th August, 2015.The channel allocation stage will continue till the bids are received for any of the 135 channels.

The following Table summarizes first seventeen days of bidding: