NEW DELHI: Flushed with the success of marketing the upcoming West Indies cricket tour of India for over Rs 500 million on its own, national broadcaster Doordarshan is contemplating doing marketing of events on its own a regular feature in the future.

"The West Indies cricket telecast marketing has shown us that we can do our own marketing and that too successfully. In future we are thinking of making this a regular feature and not rely on outside agencies for marketing events on DD," a senior official of Prasar Bharati, which oversees the activities of DD and All India Radio, told indiantelevision.com. The Publicis 'difference' is made up of numerous global strengths:

However, the marketing of cricket telecast on DD for the next World Cup in South Africa will be done by Nimbus Communication as per an earlier understanding between Nimbus and DD, the official pointed out.

National broadcaster Doordarshan recently had announced that it has mopped up Rs 510 million in booking and marketing of airtime for the upcoming India-West Indies domestic cricket series in October 2002. The series includes seven One-Day Internationals and 3 Test matches.

It had also booked three main sponsors for the series for Rs 40 million each - TVS, Coca Cola and Hindustan Lever. The five associate sponsors for the series are Kelvinator, LG Electronics, Asian Paints, Cadburys and HPCL. According to Doordarshan, the associate sponsorship have been sold to the companies for Rs 25 million each.

DD is also in the process of expanding its commercial activities by setting up marketing offices in newer cities and strengthening its existing ones in places like Delhi and Mumbai.

Still, before DD takes this step of continuing to market on its own of events to be telecast on various channels of DD, a formal okay will have to be taken from the board after discussions, the Prasar Bharati official said.

It may be worth mentioning here that various committees which had been set up to look into restructuring and functioning of Prasar Bharati, including the Narayan Murthy panel, had at least one common thread: that DD should undertake its own marketing and also retain all rights over content aired on DD channels which will help build up its library.

Despite such recommendations, DD, more often than not, has relied on outside agencies to market high-profile events, specially sporting events which, critics have pointed out, have invariably resulted in substantial loss of revenue for DD.

But the Prasar Bharati official was mum on the fact whether marketing whiz Vijay Jindal, recently appointed chairman of a marketing committee for DD, has had any role to play in the changed thinking in Mandi House, the headquarters of the pubcaster in Delhi.