There is only one community that James Murdoch truly fears in India. No, it is not the babu community in Shastri Bhavan which takes its own sweet time clearing his projects. It is the man living in the bylanes of India, who distributes his signals on the ground — the neighbourhood cable guy.In the last few weeks, five channels, almost all them dealing in news have been launched. 24x7, NDTV India, Headlines Today, Sahara Samay, Star News and broadcasters are learning a bitter lesson in cable business.In the Capital — where the territories have been carved between Siti Cable (Zee’s cable arm), Hathway (Star’s cable arm) and the independent cable operators — the news channels are seen in some localities and blacked out in the rest.The official reasons is first the cable operators don’t have the ‘‘boxes’’ to distribute the signals and secondly, they don’t have enough bandwidth to take the new ones.Now for the unofficial reason: the broadcasters have to take care of their interests. Given that most of the cable networks are multi-system operators the business only gets more complicated with each passing day. NDTV officials are currently in talks with Hathway to resolve the problem.The Hathway group says that there are not enough boxes in the city — counterclaims are made by broadcasetrs who say 3,500 boxes are in place. Secondly, they say the bandwidth is limited and cannot take on more channels.In Mumbai — the cable distribution is between Hathway, Seven Network (network of independent cable operators) and IN cable. Operators are in talks to sort out their problems.In Chennai Sumangali cable (Sun’s cable wing) is in pitched battle with Star, with the latter’s channel not visible in major parts of the state while in Kolkata its RPG and independent cable operators.One way to woo the operators is the way shown by Star — which has offered discounts — but that comes with a bait — declare all your subscribers and pay Rs 30 per subscribers as opposed to the official rate of Rs 60. A tough pill to swallow specially when you have been addicted to under declaration.Alliance One (a distribution deal between NDTV, Sony, Discovery and CNBC Asia) — trying to woo cable operators with trips abroad (undertaken before the World Cup) to attractive packaging.As of now the Alliance One package is available for Rs 55. Till the operators are truly sated, the channels’ future remains uncertain.
