Prasar Bharati is offering vacant slots on its direct-to-home (DTH) service, DD Free Dish, to popular regional language channels till March-end next year.

Under the pilot scheme, popular regional language channels (Schedule 8 languages except Hindi and Urdu), permitted and licensed by the Ministry of I&B, are invited to apply for allotment of vacant DD Free Dish slots on newly upgraded MPEG-4 streams, an official statement said.

Regional channels of Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Bangla, Assamese and Odiya languages, which are under-represented or unrepresented on the DD Free Dish platform, shall be given preference over other regional language channels, it said.

Regional news channels will also be given preference over non-news regional channels, the statement said. These regional channels will be allotted slots free of cost on a pilot basis.

The allotment will be only for the period up to March 31, 2026, it said. Presently, DD Free Dish has a bouquet of 482 TV channels and 48 radio channels.

Apart from Doordarshan channels, the bouquet comprises private TV channels across General Entertainment, News, Devotional, Movies, and Sports categories.