DD: EYEING QUICK LAUNCH OF
SPORTS CHANNEL

The Indian government is making an all-out effort to introduce its long-talked-about 24-hour sports television channel before end-March. The information and broadcasting minister Pramod Mahajan last month told DD officials that he wants the channel up and running as soon as possible. No date has been fixed but newspaper reports indicate that it is likely to be 17 or 19 March or early April.

The BJP-led government is keen on the launch, as it would like to tom-tom a made-in-India sports channel as one of its achievements to the Indian public. It will serve as an Indian riposte to ESPN and Star Sports, which are owned by multinationals, and have been ruling the sports roast so far. (The two channels have the exclusive satellite television broadcast rights to the cricket World Cup that is planned for May. DD has access to only 11 matches and daily highlights of the one-day tournament. This is something, which has irked DD and the minister.) The DD sports channel will also prove useful on another front: it will be a free-to-air alternative for cable TV operators who have been complaining of rising subscription fees charged by ESPN and Star Sports. It is likely to be launched either by Mahajan or by Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee.

A senior DD official has been put in charge of the project. The channel will be relying on archival sports material, which DD has in its library, and on coverage of domestic sports events for programming content. Added to that is the telecast rights to several sports events such as the Sharjah Cricket Cup and Wimbledon that it has acquired through the privately-owned airtime seller Stracon. It is also likely to pitch even more aggressively for rights to other sports events. DD has in the past worked with sports production house TWI and it is likely it will try to get it involved in its sports channel too.

It will, however, not beam out immediately as a 24-hour service off the Panamsat 4 transponder that DD has on lease; rather it will start as a three to four service before finally migrating to 24 hours.