This, when DD was looking for ``quality and relatively new films'' in the face of competition from private channels such as Star, Zee and Sony. A DD official had said earlier that NFDC was not offering thekind of films that DD wanted to show now. Says the official: ``The high bids are mostly for the Friday and Saturday films on DD-I.'' However, DD-II continues to disappoint everyone at Mandi House. Without elaborating, the official maintained that the film bids for DD-II are not so good. Only recently, DD-II had met with a similar fate when it had invited bids for five 30-minute late night slots (10 p.m to 12.30 a.m). Pritish Nandy Communications was the only company to have responded at that point, and no decision has been taken yet on filling up the slots because of DD receiving only one bid. But in this case, a decision will be taken soon on allotting slots to the bidders.

The commercial section of DD will do the necessary tabulation and credit rating of the bidders before putting it up to the CEO, Mr Anil Baijal. A committee headed by the CEO will then finalise the allotment of film slots. Although the bids have been submitted and opened, the names of the films to be supplied have not been revealed by the bidders so far. ``We'll ask them to submit the names now,'' says the DD official. In all, four bids will be accepted for all the slots and the films being supplied by these bidders will be telecast starting April 1, 2001. DD had last week invited bids for supplying films for DD-I and DD-II channels. But it had not fixed any floor price for the bid as it felt that bidders often distanced themselves from supplying films when a floor price was set.