|
Probing into the matter has brought out many chinks in the operators'
armour. Most of the operators are fighting Udaya on the issue of
non-operators being used to bring the operators to toe the line
and declarations and not the emotional state language issue and
here-in lies the crux of the problem for the KSCOA.
"Even national broadcasters such as Sony and Star send their
own teams to each district to study the ground realities when they
increase subscriptions or go into pay mode. They have a meeting
with major operators in a district, along with the distributors.
In case of any dispute in the declarations figure, the matter is
generally sorted out by the broadcasters team, while, in Udaya's
case, (the distributors have reportedly spent around Rs1million
each) this discretion lies with the distributor, who to recover
their investments and to earn a better revenue (5 per cent of the
monthly collection is the alleged figure) force the cable operator
to declare and pay for a higher number of connections than is feasible."
"Udaya's own teams have visited hardly any district to assess
the ground realities, they are relying only on their distributors.
In one major town where Udaya directly settled for a figure of 8,000
declarations, as distributors in another similar town want the operator
to declare 20,000 connections," alleged a cable operator from
the heartland of Karnataka.
"Also, to make us pay up the demanded figure, the distributor
threatens to, and sometimes gives a signal through a non-operator,"
he adds.
To cite another example - reports from different sources in Mandya
district reveal that a distributor appointed a non-operator named
Wellworth who had been transmitting the Udaya signal. Result: major
operators blanked out Udaya for a couple of days. Only on assurance
directly from Udaya that the matter would be resolved in a couple
of days did transmission recommence this evening. Reportedly, a
number of non-operators have been given decoder boxes in the rural
areas by Udaya distributors.
Operators who are really concerned about having to pay for Udaya
say: "How can we survive? Many subscribers will refuse to pay
the charges, saying that they were not interested in many of the
pay channels. As it is, Sony has already asked to pay more for the
two months when they will be broadcasting the ICC championship and
the tri-nation cup in Holland - the subscriber will not pay extra
money for two months, we will have to shell out more money from
our own pockets - even during the recent series in Sri Lanka we
were forced to pay more to Star TV" said a cable operator.
The protest against Udaya turned violent on 19 August. Rural cable
operators, backed by Kannada activists presented a memorandum against
the Sun channels Udaya Bouquet turning to pay mode, to the chief
minister, the deputy chief minister and other politicians who had
gone to perform a pooja of the holy Cauvery river at the KRS dam
near the picturesque Vrindavan gardens.
Shouting slogans against Udaya, a mob of around 150 persons prevented
the local Udaya camera crew from filming the event for about 15-20
minutes. Matters were brought to normalcy when assurances by the
politicians including the local actor-turned-politician Ambarish
assured that matter would be sorted out in a day or two.
|
