Deadline over, pay channels buy more time

In another significant rollback, Ministry officials did not seem to be averse to quantity discounts and tiering of pay channels on the basis of genres. So one could have all entertainenment channels as one pay band, movie channels as another and sports as yet another tier.

Incidentally, the notification, while cautioning cable operators against bundling of channels, is silent on tiering.

It is also learnt that the officials wanted the broadcasters to fix the entire pay tier around Rs 150 — with the very basic tier at a subsidised rate of Rs 25.

The meeting was attended by Star COO Sameer Nair, Siti Cable head Jawahar Goel, ESPN/Star Sports Managing Director Manu Sawney, TV 18 Limited Managing Director Raghav Bahl and CEO Harish Chawla, Sony’s Shantano Aditya and DD’s D-G S.Y. Quraishi. Chopra and Additional secretary Vijay Singh represented the Government.

While Nair said his channel would come out with the rates by June 16 or 17, Sunday being a holiday, Goel said the broadcasters will be working together in a manner that would not disadvantage the consumer.

The broadcsters declared that they will remain pay post-July 14 — the date on which the Conditional Access System is sought to be implemented in the four metros of Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai and Kolkata.

Chopra later said the broadcasters had sought time to talk to their Multi-System-Operators band local mile operators before declaring the prices, this when their actual bosses were out of the country.