Indian plays hockey, wins hearts; DD plays hookey, breaks hearts

The worst tormented was Andal Amma, mother of India’s star performer, Dhanraj Pillay. She spent a sleepless night, eager to have a dekko of her son, whom she had last seen months ago. To her dismay, her hopes remained grounded with DD Sports Channel going kaput across the city.

An agitated Andal blasted DD, “It’s been quite a while that I saw him (Dhanraj) in person, the last being in July. As a family, we felt left out, and only learnt of India’s win from the news an hour after. What is the sense of talking of exclusive rights when we, as Indians, are denied of what remains a dream of every sportsman performing at the Games.”

“My son promised us (India) the gold medals. If hopes were so high, why could not DD at least show us the hockey matches live,” a point well put by her. A despondent Andal had to make do with the recording of the match telecast at 4 pm.

To rub salt into the wounds, the DD National Network during the highlights ran a very prominent ticker-tape which read, “You could have seen this match, had you switched over to the encrypted DD Sports.”

Is commercialisation to blame? Vasant Patwardhan, president of the Federation of Cable Operators says, “Actually, if DD sports was to be turned into a pay channel, the process should have begun two months back and the cable operators be informed in advance so that they could make necessary arrangements.”

He adds, “Showing the channel means getting a decoder which costs around Rs 32,000. There are at least three major control-rooms in the city which would need to have the decoders separately. But that is not all. The cable-operators would have to collect a fee (nearly Rs six) from each subscriber per month. How is it possible to make all these arrangements at such a short notice? Getting the subscriber pay the additional amount for one more pay channel would be difficult.”

Already, the cable-operators, are spending nearly Rs 85 every month per subscriber towards the fees of the various pay-channels. Will the subscriber be ready to pay excess amount just to watch the Olympics? And even if the subscriber pays the necessary fee this month, is there any guarantee that the subscriber would continue to pay the fees for the entire year? asks Patwardhan.

With the Olympic Games now on, there is certainly a demand from subscribers for the DD Sports Channel. However, as the channel is not being shown, the subscribers feel that the cable-operators are playing mischief, he said.