DD delivers the first upset of Olympics

BANGALORE/MUMBAI, SEPT 15: Sports buffs got a rude shock on Thursday night when they failed to find Doordarshan's sports channel (DD Sport...

BANGALORE/MUMBAI, SEPT 15: Sports buffs got a rude shock on Thursday night when they failed to find Doordarshan’s sports channel (DD Sports) on their TV screens. DD Sports has exclusive rights for telecast of the Sydney Olympics and the opening ceremony scheduled from 1.30 pm on Friday seems doomed because DD suddenly decided to turn into a pay-channel on the eve of the Games.

Without as much as a whiff of an announcement, DD, the so-called “public service” broadcaster tied up with Modi Entertainment Network (MEN) and made DD Sports a pay channel. This means cable operators have to pay the channel Rs 5.90 per subscriber to be able to receive the signal. Obviously, most cable operators, enraged with the decision, have not paid up and the channel went off the air. DD has the exclusive rights to Olympics telecasts and must have calculated that operators would have no choice but to pay up because of pressure from subscribers.

But the sentiment was clearly against DD. “We subsidise DD. It is our money that they are spending. How dare DD make it a pay channel that too without any announcement,” screamed an angry Sunil Sikand, a filmmaker who called this paper in Mumbai.

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Three of the cable biggies — Siti Cable, Hathway Software Development (P) Ltd and IndusIn Media — have decided to forego the channel saying they do not want to get involved with MEN, after its “street-fight” with ESPN.

One director of the Hathway group said MEN’s demands were unreasonable. “The group is interested in marketing its Hallmark (movies) and Kermit (puppet) channel more than DD Sports. Charging Rs 5.90 per subscriber for DD Sports and News is expensive.”

Also, installing the Integrated Receiver Decoder (IRD), that will decode the now-encrypted channel, at a cost of Rs 10,000, plus monthly instalments, for a DD channel is something cable operators are not too keen on doing.

A MEN executive, however, said cable operators were informed 10 days in advance. “This is not yesterday’s development. They all knew about it.”

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