IBF, MSOs in talks; no common ground

IBF, MSOs in talks; no common ground

IBF

NEW DELHI: The meeting between the Indian Broadcasting Foundation (IBF) and the MSOs is continuing here on various issues relating to CAS and no concrete decision has been arrived at as yet.

The MSOs , according to early information available with indiantelevision.com, have demanded a distribution margin as high as 70 per cent. Though the Sony Entertainment TV India representative is reported to have not said much, Star India's distribution head Tony D'Silva is understood to have said that the global norm is between 50-60 per cent and that MSOs in India are demanding too high a margin.

Interestingly, tomorrow there is a meeting of the task force on conditional access systems (CAS) set up by the government scheduled for 3:30 pm and issues like these need to be sorted out before tomorrow's meeting.

In the last task force meet, the government had requested MSOs and broadcasters to sort out various contentious issues and come back with some concrete proposals so that other things could start moving on the CAS front.