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Journalism of Courage
In a major setback for Prasar Bharati, the Delhi High Court today not only allowed private broadcaster Nimbus Communications to market the India-West Indies cricket telecast on Doordarshan, but also ordered the public broadcaster not to sell the feed to private DTH operators 8212; like TataSky and DishTV.
In other words, this means DD will have to encrypt its signal so as to make sure that the live feed of the ODI cricket matches are only beamed into terrestrial rural and small-town homes catered to by DD and not to urban DTH homes. Also, DD will not get the 8220;clean live feed8221; ad-free that it had asked for from the BCCI8217;s rights holder.
However, while allowing Nimbus to do the marketing, Justice Kaul asked it to deposit Rs 5.5 crore with Prasar Bharati, as part of its 25 per cent share in ad-revenues on its channel.
Nimbus had contented that it can generate revenue to the tune of Rs 22 crore through the sale of advertising and other slots during the matches. The public broadcaster, on the other hand, said it will sell the slots for Rs 4.26 crore.
Guidelines that makes it mandatory for any channel to share feed with the public broadcaster of any sporting event of national interest on a 75:25 revenue sharing basis.
In a separate petition to the two-judge bench of Justice M.K. Sharma and Justice Sanjiv Kumar, the Prasar Bharati sought simultaneous telecast of the matches. It was challenging the Delhi High Court single-bench order by which Nimbus is providing the public broadcaster a seven-minute delayed feed of the matches. Refusing a request of urgent hearing of the case as the second India-West Indies match was on in Cuttack, the court scheduled the hearing of this petition tomorrow.
