Prasar Bharati grapple with encryption problem

New Delhi: Live telecast of the Olympics from Sydney by DD Sports can now be viewed on eight large screens put up at public places in the four metros, even as Prasar Bharati continues to grapple with the problem of encryption of the channel.

The screens are at Connaught Place and Delhi Haat in Delhi, at Chowpatty and Juhu in Mumbai, at Esplanade and Sealdah in Calcutta, and at Marina Beach and Tyagaraj Nagar in Chennai.

Meanwhile, Prasar Bharati chief executive officer Rajeev Ratna Shah told UNI that it was unfortunate that some cable operators were not taking the encrypted DD Sports channel as a result of which the subscriber was being put to a loss.

Considering that Doordarshan was only charging Rs 5.90 per month which amounted to less than Rs 72 per year, Shah said the average subscriber would have no problem in paying this especially since Doordarshan now had agreements with all Indian sports bodies in different disciplines for exclusive telecast and had shown live telecasts of events like Wimbledon and the French Open.

Shah said that clear instructions had been issued to DD Sports distributors Modi Entertainment Network (MEN) that it should not link the distribution of DD Sports and DD News (which is hard-bundled with DD Sports at no extra charge) with the distribution of their channels Hallmark and Kermit.

This followed complaints from cable operators that they had been given the option of either taking DD channels for Rs 5.90 or take the DD channelsalong with the American channels for Rs 8.90.

Doordarshan has also issued a warning that cable operators who are attempting to downlink signals of Olympics from channels other than Doordarshan for re-transmitting on their networks are liable to penalty under the law.

Prasar Bharati said that distribution of unauthorised signals would invite legal action including prosecution under the Cable Television Networks (regulation) Act as amended.

Shah said DD Sports would give coverage of around 376 hours of Olympics live telecasts and another 240 hours of recordings would be provided by DD One and DD Two.

Meanwhile, MEN said over 7,000 integrated service decoders had already been distributed to cable operators in more than 150 cities. These cable operators have signed memorandums of understanding with the Modi Entertainment Network which is marketing the pay channels of Doordarshan.

The sources denied that there were any problems, claiming that 90 per cent of the decoders had been distributed and viewers were seeing the live telecasts.

Doordarshan has always taken pride for beaming free-to-air in an era of pay channels, but has clearly fallen prey to market forces and taken obvious advantage of the Olympics to encrypted DD Sports and DD News. This is perhaps the first step since it went commercial that the public broadcaster has taken towards increasing its revenues from sources other than advertising.

UNI