NEW DELHI/MUMBAI: A day after the Indian government decided to defer rollout of conditional access system (CAS) in Delhi, a delegation of Cable Operators United Front (COUF) went and met up with senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader Madan Lal Khurana, generally being viewed by the industry as the villain of the piece.
“We assured Mr Khurana that the cable operators would not raise the monthly cable subscription fee and the consumers would continue to pay the same amount as they are paying now,” COUF’s Tejender Chawla said after the meting today, confirming that the consumers would not be harassed.
Khurana, who is making a bid for the chief ministership of Delhi in the ensuing state elections later this year, has been one of the staunchest opponents of CAS rollout in Delhi. Surprisingly, he had found an ally in the Congress chief minister, Shiela Dikshit, on the issue of CAS.
The COUF delegation assured Khurana that a backlash from the cable community against the government decision is highly unlikely; and even if that happens, it would be limited to some independent cable ops who have their own agenda.
COUF is one of the cable organisations that has been maintaining that providing the basic tier of service for Rs 72 (excluding taxes) in a post-CAS regime would be economically untenable for cable operators. The organisation had been demanding that the price be fixed at Rs 180 per month.
Meanwhile, a meeting that was to be held by cable operators in Mumbai turned out to be a non-CAS event where some other issues were discussed.
Even in Delhi some of the MSOs and cable ops, who had threatened agitation today, decided to hold back and follow the wait-and-watch policy. A senior executive of an MSO said here, “We are waiting to see what is the reaction in Mumbai and Kolkata before we chart out a future course of action.”
Tag: Khurana
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The day after: COUF team meets Khurana
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Nimbus’ Khurana introduces Qalam 2003
MUMBAI: Indiantelevision.com’s scriptwriters’ course Qalam was officially flagged off today at production house Siddhant Cinevision’s office in Mumbai with an introduction by Nimbus Communications CEO Dr Akash Khurana.
An orientation by Khurana, course coordinator Aditya Seth, and Vinod Ranganath set the tone for the first day of the course. Emphasising the importance of close interaction of students with the coordinators as also within themselves, the faculty managed to create a relaxed atmosphere for preliminary introductions of students and faculty alike.
As quite a few of the students were holding jobs, concerns of convenient timings and schedules were discussed and worked out. The introductions and discussions threw up interesting insights into the backgrounds of those present. The class of Qalam 2003 came across as a diverse mix of people – some with extensive experience in related fields and others fresh from college – each hoping to bring in their own perspectives to the hands-on and interactive learning approach.
The faculty took due care to ask each one of them and assess what each wanted or expected from the course and what they planned to do with the education Qalam would impart them. The coordinators also explained what they as media experts looked for in terms of performance, dedication, and ethical play.
As Khurana aptly put it to the students, “We’re sharing our hard-earned knowledge with you and we expect you to respect and learn from what we’ve accumulated over the years – quite like in the gurukul system.”
Looking at the enthusiastic response from the participants, Qalam, the only course that fills the need for trained television and film writers, is on and well on its way.Also read:
Scriptwriters course Qalam 2003 kicks off Saturday -
Delhi cable ops get mixed response from politicos on CAS petition
NEW DELHI: The cable fraternity today went before the politicians to make a spirited case for implementing the conditional access system . They were snubbed at one place, while at another assurances were given that CAS would get implemented.
A delegation of cable operators from Delhi — the city where the cable fraternity is most active amongst the four metros —- was rebuffed this morning by Madan Lal Khurana, former chief minister of Delhi and a senior member of the Bharatiya Janata Party, which leads the coalition government in India, when told that CAS would be consumer-friendly.
According to Roop Sharma of Cable Operators Federation of India and Vikky Choudhry of the National Cable & Telecom Association, despite representations to the contrary from the cable operators of his so-called constituency in Delhi, Khurana was adamant that CAS would not end up being pro-consumer.
Sharma said that “Khurana was speaking the language of the broadcasters , which was sad.”
The delegation of cable ops had gone to meet Khurana, a vehement critic of CAS, to impress upon him that CAS is good and the issue should not be politicised. However, Khurana, as Choudhry pointed out, kept on insisting that in an election year CAS may turn out to be like the onion issue, which reportedly was the cause of BJP losing power to the Congress in the state of Delhi.
However, a short distance away from the meeting with Khurana, the cable operators delegation found succour when former information and broadcasting minister Sushma Swaraj who assured them that CAS would become a reality —something that even God cannot say with certainty in the highly politicised
atmosphere, as the joke goes in Delhi.Meanwhile, in the memorandum to Khurana, both COFI and NCTA have expressed their “disappointment” over the politician’s “indifferent attitude to the problems of the cable operators and implementation of CAS in the cable TV industry.”
” We understand from your statements as given in various newspapers, that your main concern with regard to CAS is whether the interest of the consumers will be safeguarded. We wish to assure you that we share the same concern. CAS is a universally accepted and implemented methodology for administering pay TV channel revenues all over the world and even in under-developed countries like Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. It is evident that you have not been correctly informed about the complete implications of CAS. We wish you to know the system well before attempting to down rate it,” the memorandum said.
Taking a pot shot at the broadcasters, something that has become the norm of the day since CAS was introduced in the Indian lexicon, the memorandum to Khurana further said, “The broadcasters are afraid of CAS as it would mean a dip in their revenues, subscription particularly, of their not so popular channels. So in order to delay and prevent the implementation of CAS and by defying government regulations, they are resorting to bundling and tiering of channels at much lower rates, not giving a fair opportunity to the subscribers to choose what they desire.”
Making a case for bringing in legislation to rein in the pay channels, the memo stated that the pay channels are earning through subscriptions as well as through advertisements. “In order to give good value for money, the pay channels should be made to restrict their ad-breaks to a total of 0.3% of every 1440 minutes of programming,” the memo stated, adding that a price regulatory body needs to be established under the Cable Television Network Act 1995 to put a ceiling on the rates declared and to control any future price hikes by the broadcasters.
But the problem here is that a certain section of politicians are refusing to listen to the cable fraternity and are campaigning against CAS, the same way as a certain set of politicians had earlier refused to see the broadcasters viewpoint and had heralded that CAS is the best thing to happen to Indian television.