This may well turn out to be a repeat of the 2000 Sydney Olympics telecast by Doordarshan when it went around town, shouting about its exclusive rights that netted only Rs 1.5 crore advertisement revenue.Four years later, the public service broadcaster, subsisting on taxpayers’ money, is spending close to Rs 24 crore on the Athens Olympics, with CEO K.S. Sarma admitting that revenues may not be anywhere close to the amount spent.Not just that, the broadcaster is spending $75,000 for the highlights package of the 17-day event beginning on August 13 with the relay torch run.Sarma says the rules for exclusive rights are stringent and do not allow individual public service broadcasters to make their own package. Hence the extra expenditure. ‘‘There are 42 streams of sports on a given day and every public service broadcaster gets six country-specific events with the countries relaying live the events they are interested in,’’ says Sarma.A repeat of 2000 will also be evident in the 15-member team that will leave for Athens. As usual, the production team will have senior officials on board, raising questions about their presence. ‘‘If DD has to simply relay whatever is being shown, is the presence of the contingent necessary,’’ say officials who have been left out.It may be recalled that the Asian Broadcasting Union is outsourcing the telecast of important events by having them produced and packaged in Australia to cut costs.DD could learn its lessons from there. Also, it is time to assess whether events such as this really require such huge expenditure. Not to mention the officials who will be flying to Greece at the taxpayer’s cost.
