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IS
DD SPORTS TURNING SYDNEY SOUR?
Play Up, Pay Up
Why DD Sports has put a price tag on the
Olympic Games, angered the public and taken on the cable television industry
By
Namita Bhandare
It
was a case of pandemonium waiting to erupt: Doordarshan's 24-hour sports
channel discovers its pay TV avatar on the eve of the Olympic Games, encrypts
its signal and asks cable operators to pay a fee for their exclusive telecast
of the Sydney Olympics.
The result?
Not a ripple but a torrent of criticism against DD Sports for this "blackmail
attempt" of a public waiting to see world-class athletes and the
resumption of an old tussle between DD and cable operators with a sports
event as its centrepiece.
As things
stand, major cable networks, also called multi-service operators (MSOs),
like INcablenet, Hathway and RPG have decided to black-out DD Sports exclusive
24-hour Olympic coverage. Even though DD is asking for Rs 5.90 per subscriber-less
than the
Rs 8 charged
by ESPN or the Rs 6.25 by Star Sports-angry cable operators are refusing
to pay claiming they have not been given enough notice.
While the
major MSOs refuse to telecast DD Sports others like Siticable are showing
the channel as are a few independent cable operators.
"The
crux of the problem is the number of subscribers," says Hathway's
K. Jayaraman and it has always been this way. DD officials claim that
certain MSOs do not reveal the real numbers of their subscriber base to
avoid paying higher fees to TV channels.
"First,
they under-represent the number of customers they actually have. And to
make matters worse they are asking us to settle for 30 per cent of what
they claim even with ESPN," says a DD official.
THE SHOE
PINCHES: MSOs have had run-ins with private sports channels in the
past without DD getting involved in their fracas. Now that the shoe is
pinching the Government, I&B officials realise, very acutely, the
lack of a regulatory framework that will accurately monitor the number
of customers each MSO caters to.
MSOs say
that DD sprang its decision to go pay with the sports channel without
enough notice. "The first I heard of it was on September 13 and till
today there is nothing in writing," says Jayaraman. DD counters that
MSOs were told about the decision almost a month before the Olympics.
"In any case," says Rajiv Dutta, senior manager (distribution)
INcablenet, "They are showing the highlights on DD National and Metro.
Our subscribers don't want the sports channel."
Countering
the claim that DD was "exploiting" the Olympics, an I&B
ministry official says, "What's wrong with piggy-backing on the Olympics?
It makes sound sense." Globally, television rights for major sporting
events are bitterly fought for because broadcasters know that the viewers
are willing to pay for live international sport. With the Olympics, DD
Sports has only just joined in the game.
Prasar Bharti
CEO Rajeeva Ratna Shah cautions that Rs 5.90 is an "introductory"
price that will go up to Rs 8 by the time India plays cricket against
Zimbabwe later this year. However, he also adds that DD is currently showing
11 hours of Olympic highlights on the national channel and another eight
hours on the Metro channel, gratis. "We have 70 million terrestrial
viewers who are getting 19 hours of free Olympic coverage," he says.
Adding to its woes, DD is now also trying to market the Olympics on its
own after Pritish Nandy Communications (PNC) returned the exclusive rights
it had purchased for Rs 15 crore. While DD, which paid Rs 12 crore for
the Olympics, has gone ahead and encashed PNC's bank guarantee of Rs 7.5
crore, it still has to deal with a potential Rs 7.5 crore loss. "Our
marketing team is on the job and hopefully we will recover this money-
and more," says Shah adding optimistically, "This will be our
marketing team's baptism by fire."
This clash
between DD, MSOs and an agency which could not sell the greatest show
in the sporting world has drowned out the grievances of the general public.
They centre on the quality of presentation and expert comment. DD Sports
still comes off very badly when compared to Star and ESPN. DD Sport's
big blooper came during the opening ceremony itself: one venerable DD
commentator identified the athlete lighting the Olympic torch as Herb
Elliott. Elliott, 1500m winner at the Rome Olympics, is a 62-year-old
man. The athlete on the screen was Atlanta 400m silver medallist Cathy
Freeman, who is 27 and, of course, a woman.
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