In all, Rs 110.24 crore is all that the government has in its FM kitty till date. The most recent signatories are the South India-based Sun and Udaya groups, who signed on Monday. According to an I&B official handling the FM deals, while Udaya has paid up bank guarantee worth Rs 50 lakh for a channel in Vishakapatnam, Sun has paid Rs 9.87 crore for three channels in Chennai, Coimbatore and Tirunelveli. All the three Sun channels are in a similar price band, with the annual licensing fee for Chennai costing Rs 3.30 crore, Coimbatore Rs 3.35 crore and Tirunelveli Rs 3.22 crore.

Earlier, five other companies signed up for the FM licence. These companies are Mid-Day group's Mid-Day Radio North (India) Ltd, Mid-Day Broadcast South (India) Ltd and Radio Mid-Day West (India) Ltd; Ispat group's Music Broadcast Pvt Ltd; and the Bennett Coleman group. The payments that the government has notched up from these FM players are Rs 20.17 crore from the Mid-Day group for three channels; Rs 41.37 crore for six centres from Ispat's Music Broadcast group; and Rs 38.33 crore for 11 centres from the Bennett Coleman group.

But, the biggest player in the area-Zee group's New Media Broadcasting Pvt Ltd-is keeping everybody guessing as to how it's planning to raise the Rs 89.12 crore it needs to pay the bank guarantee for the 29 channels that it successfully bid for. Apart from Zee, some of the other successful bidders who haven't paid their bank guarantees yet are Bollywood Broadcasting Pvt Ltd, Dhun Radio Pvt Ltd, Living Media India Ltd, Magic Radio India Pvt Ltd, Modi Entertainment Network, Neffs (India) Pvt Ltd, Nimbus Communications, Observer Network, Raj Telefilms, Suraj Broadcasting and Vertex Broadcasting. The list of successful bidders is long, but the time to make the payments is quite short now.