| The idea behind the new organization is
to negotiate, on behalf of the members, a uniform price for pay channels,
which are again set to revise upward the annual subscription rates,
and act as a single-window negotiation counter.
As usual, the signatories' list looks impressive and has been spearheaded
by Vikki Choudhry, who is also the president of the Delhi based
National Cable and Telecom Association.
According to Choudhry, "It is generally seen that MSOs give
the pay channels to their licensees or joint venture partners at
differential rates, sometimes much lower than the announced rates.
This preferential treatment allows some cable operators to keep
the monthly rates low. Our aim would be to negotiate a uniform price
for all pay channels to all the independent cable operators not
aligned with any MSO."
However, it is still not clear how the broadcasters and MSOs would
react to this new initiative of the independent cable ops. A senior
executive of a broadcaster operating pay channels, in a cautious
reaction, says, "We'd have to wait and watch to see what this
is all about and how this newly-formed body, as you are saying,
takes up issues as we have not heard anything formally."
Choudhry, however, points out that Monday onwards, a formal communication
would go out to broadcasters on the ICSP's demands.
The following are the resolutions adopted at the first meeting
of the ICSP:
* Give collective payments of the amounts payable by each of the
undersigned/ members to be paid to pay TV broadcasters by the "consortium"
or CSPO before the due dates.
* The consortium shall act as " one window" through which
its members shall make the payments to the pay channels.
* All the members will stand together and act in a manner that
shall be beneficial for the interest of its members and in the interest
of the consumers at large.
* All negotiations / dealings /execution of service contracts and
other work with the pay channels will be done jointly by the select
committee on behalf of all the ICSP consortium members.
The committee members include Choudhry, Raaj Mutereja, Inderjeet
Singh, Brijesh K Sharma, Sanjeev Sachdeva, Singh Raj, Suresh Yadav,
Anil Dargan, Rajeshwar Choudhary and Satish Saini.
The signatories to the resolution include independent cable ops
like Cablevision Network's Inderjeet S, Trinetravision's Anil Khera,
Brijesh Sharma of Home Cable TV Network in Ghaziabad on the outskirts
of
Delhi, WAC Star's Satish Sharma , Arcy Cable TV Network's Sushil
Kumar Katon and Pradeep Arora, Mohan Electronics' Inder Mohan, Citiview
Cable [P] Ltd, Gurgaon's Sanjeev Sachdeva, Sanjay Dosajh of Channel
"n" Channel
Cable Network in Gurgaon, Bobby Skylines' Vikas Tyagi, Videospectrum's
Dinesh Bidichandani, Satellite Vision's Rajeshwar, Multivision's
Ashok Sharma, Skychannel's Sunil Sasan, Multivision Network's Aditya
Sharma, Avdhesh Sharma of Priyadarshni Cable TV Network in Ghaziabad
and Cable Quest magazine owner Roop Sharma.
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