Ministry gives green signal to Tata-Star’s DTH

The long-pending Tata-Star TV’s Direct to Home (DTH) venture has finally got a letter-of-intent (LoI) to start operations. Along with S...

The long-pending Tata-Star TV’s Direct to Home (DTH) venture has finally got a letter-of-intent (LoI) to start operations. Along with Star, Kalanidhi Maran’s Sun TV will, after it gets an LoI, start its DTH operations. According to sources, the green signal to the projects was given before Information and Broadcasting Minister left for Cannes.

I&B Secretary S.K. Arora said, ‘‘The two companies have complied with the DTH guidelines and the LoI was issued after comments from the concerned ministries.’’ The Tata-Star, Rs 1,600-crore DTH project has been awaiting the government’s approval ever since it was asked to restructure its company to conform to the guidelines which stipulate that management control must rest in Indian hands.

As far as stage two of private FM operations is concerned, that has been more or less finalised after consultations. Also to be taken up before the Cabinet will be the new guidelines for downlinking, to make channels uplinking from outside India accountable to the laws of the land. The policy would make it mandatory for channels to register their offices in India.

Story continues below this ad

On their first day in office, secretaries to government of India usually refrain from saying anything particular. Arora stuck to the general norm.

NDTV to add another channel to its kitty

NEW DELHI: Prannoy Roy promoted NDTV will add another channel, taking the number of channels from the NDTV stable to four. The channel is likely to have a bit of both information and entertainment. NDTV informed the National Stock Exchange of its intention to start a fourth channel and sought the I&B ministry’s permission to uplink. NDTV operates three channels — namely 24X7, NDTV India and NDTV Profit. — ENS