|
A team of IBF, which is the apex body of broadcasting companies
operating in India, has sought an appointment with India's information
and broadcasting minister Ravi Shankar Prasad tomorrow to apprise
him of the ground realities and also convey to him that the team
would be meeting up with the chairman of the parliamentary standing
committee on IT, telecom and convergence Somnath Chatterjee later
in the day.
According to a representative of a broadcasting company who attended
today's meeting, which did have its heated moments, "The broad consensus
that emerged from today's meeting was that the government and policy
makers should be apprised that unless the CAS rollout is phased
out in the metros also, there would be total confusion in cable
homes after the deadline of July 14 expires."
The executive added that the CAS rollout should be phased out in
the metros to see the outcome and "to test the waters". "It may
start off with one city like Chennai and then later be introduced
in other metros too, over a period of time," he explained.
Post-14 July, as per the rules, all pay channels would have to
mandatorily go through a set-top box. The whole exercise is to give
the consumer the power of choice to see what he wants to see and
pay for only that. There also would be a basic tier of at least
30 free to air channels that should be made available to the cable
consumers, as per the government, at the rate of Rs 72 per month.
The representatives of big broadcasting companies like Sony Entertainment
TV India, Star India, ESPN-Star Sports and Discovery India were
more or less unanimous at the meeting that an IBF delegation should
seek some relaxation in the deadline for implementation of CAS ---
at least to avoid confusion in the metros of Delhi, Mumbai , Kolkatta
and Chennai --- as making available boxes to cable operators and
consumers is still difficult within the given time frame.
The Subhash Chandra-promoted Zee Telefilms Ltd, which has openly
been in favour of CAS and its implementation at the earliest, did
sound a small note of discordance at the IBF meeting today.
Jawahar Goel of Zee was not in favour of deferring CAS rollout
indefinitely or for a long period of time. According to sources
in the IBF, Goel did say that if at all there is a need to avoid
confusion on the rollout of CAS, then a short deferment should be
sought from the government ranging between 15-20 days.
According to some of those who attended yesterday's meeting, Goel
also said that a long-term deferment of CAS may defeat the whole
purpose with which the government had sought to introduce addressability
in Indian cable homes.
Today's meeting was attended, amongst others, by Star India CEO
Peter Mukerjea and Star India COO Sameer Nair, ESPN Star Sports
head Manu Sawhney, SET India CEO Kunal Dasgupta, SET-Discovery One
Alliance president Shantonu Aditya, Discovery India's MD Deepak
Shourie, TV Today CEO G Krishnan, Eenadu's I Venkat and Sahara TV
president and former I&B secretary Mahesh Prasad. Sahara, as the
leading free to air (FTA) Hindi entertainment channel, has been
quite vociferous in its support for CAS.
The sources added that Prasad was all for implementation of CAS
as per the deadline and also emphasized the fact that in the basic
tier there should be 60 channels as just 30 channels may be inadequate
for the consumer.
But adding more channels in the basic tier would depend on the
technology and the infrastructure that a cable operator has at his
disposal as cable operators are already finding it difficult to
add the newer news channels to their existing repertoire because
of lack of bandwidth and other technical difficulties.
Till the time of writing this report it could not be confirmed
whether the I&B minister has granted an appointment to the IBF delegation.
But, as said earlier also in reports on indiantelvision.com, the
CAS saga is far from over.
|
