Picture still fuzzy as Prasad skirts ‘soft launch’ term

‘‘Yes, CAS will roll out in the four metros of Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai and Delhi. No, there will be no blackout of channels for those who have not received the set-top boxes. And yes, the Government will ensure that the rollout of CAS will be smooth so as not to inconvenience the consumers,’’ Prasad said.

What this means is that no one will be penalised if the boxes are not in place by July 15. A sort of ‘‘twilight zone plan’’ is being proposed to enable the penetration of set-top boxes in adequate numbers around six months, during which broadcasters will freeze the rates at what is currently prevalent and no one will be taken to task for not having boxes to receive pay channels.

While this has been done to check cable operators from hiking subscription rates, on the face of slow implementation of CAS, ministry officials were quite content at the sweet gesture made by broadcasters.

The Minister was in receipt of proposals from broadcasters, who had come out in full strength — Star’s Peter Mukherjea, ESPN’s Manyu Sawhney, Discovery’s Deepak Shourie, Sony’s Kunal Dasgupta and Zee’s Jawahar Goel — with their list of channel prices, individually as declared by the Ministry, but the list fell short of the Ministry’s expectations.

‘‘We could have preferred little lower rates,’’ officials said.

Also Zee, which so far had taken care to be on the right side of the Government, refrained from declaring their channel prices. ‘‘They have asked for some more time,’’ officials said.

If Prasad and his men expected broadcasters to loosen up their prices a little to fall within the Rs 200 margin, they didn’t butter up.

The list of their a la carte channels — if taken without bundling/bouquet — is still hovering above the Rs 240 mark. And this not only excludes the price the consumer has to pay for the box and the monthly rental for hiring the boxes, but also leaves the Rs 72 plus taxes for the free to air channels.

The price of driver channels range between Star Plus declared rate Rs 24, ESPN Rs 29, Sony Rs 20, HBO Rs 20, Discovery Hindi/English Rs 20. If the broadcasters did their bit by even offering dual feeds that is channels available as FTA and pay, multi-service operators junked the idea as impractical.

As for the consumer, the picture is still fuzzy. No operator has come to him with a request for a box even as he has been left wondering whether investing in a box makes sense at all. By the way, every one the Minister to the cable operator are fighting his battle. Does that make sense?