ITV

Tag: V N Khare

  • Court asks Ten to furnish financial details on cricket

    Court asks Ten to furnish financial details on cricket

    NEW DELHI: The cricket series is about to get over, but the fight between Doordarshan and Ten Sports continue; with the former today asking the latter in the Supreme Court to make available financial details and the benefits that accrued to it by relaying the cricket matches on DD too.

    On the basis of the application filed by Prasar Bharati, a bench comprising Chief Justice V N Khare and Justices N Santosh Hegde and SB Sinha, asked Taj India (Pvt) Ltd., the Indian representative of Ten Sports’ Dubai based parent company, to file all relevant documents pertaining to the query raised by Prasar Bharati on or before 3 May, the next date of hearing.

    According to agency reports, appearing for the national broadcaster, Attorney General Soli J Sorabjee submitted that for the purpose of calculations of losses, the release (advertisement) orders received by the Indian concern of Ten Sports and its sub-distributor HMA Udyog Ltd. (a KK Modi company) were of extreme importance.

    Keeping this in mind, the national broadcaster had asked for seven documents to ascertain the exact relationship between Taj TV Ltd., Dubai and Taj TV (India) Pvt Ltd. and Ten Sports and the relationship between Andrew Kumar with Taj TV Ltd., Dubai/Taj TV (India) Pvt Ltd. and HMA Udyog Ltd., news
    agencies said basing their reports on the court proceedings.

    The national broadcaster also wanted to know “the revenue generated” by Ten Sports from the telecast of India-Pakistan cricket series thus far including the revenue generated as a result of transmission of the logo and advertisements of Ten Sports on Doordarshan.

    Ten Sports, which is the exclusive rights owners for broadcasting the ongoing India-Pakistan cricket series, had earlier refused to share the terrestrial rights with DD.

    Modi Entertainment Network, which is the exclusive distributor of Ten Sports in India, today claimed it had suffered huge losses because of the telecast of the event by Doordarshan and the arbitrators to be appointed by the apex court should quantify the same.

    Since the Chief Justice will retire before the next date of hearing in the matter, it was directed that in his place Justice SB Sinha would be the third judge on the bench.

    Ten had moved the SC last month after a Chennai high court ruled in favour of DD. The apex court, in an interim order in March on the eve of the first one-dayer between India and Pakistan, had directed that DD should relay Ten signals. Later the court added that the relay should be done in toto – logo and advertisements booked by Ten – in public interest as DD
    was airing its own ads, a fact protested at by Taj India.

    The court had also asked DD to deposit Rs 500 million with it as surety towards compensation payable, if any, to Ten Sports in regard to the dispute.

  • DD gets to air matches, but SC puts riders

    DD gets to air matches, but SC puts riders

    NEW DELHI: ‘The entire nation can only cheer, if the entire nation gets to watch.’

    This is part of self-congratulatory advertisement that India’s pubcaster Prasar Bharati is planning to bring out tomorrow after the Supreme Court today, in an interim order, directed Ten Sports to make available a live feed of the remaining three one dayers and three Test matches of the Indo-Pak cricket series to pubcaster Doordarshan even as the war of words continued late in the day with both the warring factions claiming victory and expressing happiness.

    The direction was given by a three-judge bench, headed by Chief Justice V N Khare and Justices N Santosh Hegde and S H Kapadia. The court observed that it would determine later the quantum of revenue losses, if any, suffered by any of the parties and directed DD to deposit a sum of Rs 400 million (in addition to Rs 100 million deposited earlier) as a guarantee within three days.Both the warring factions – Ten Sports and Prasar Bharati – claimed that ultimately the interest of general public of India proved victorious.

    K S Sarma, CEO of Prasar, which looks after Doordarshan and All India Radio, said that it was his “dharma” to try getting terrestrial rights in public interest. Earlier in the day, Dubai-based Taj TV Ltd CEO Chris McDonald had quipped, “In the larger public interest, Taj Dubai will be beaming the Ten Sports signal, including the India-Pak matches live on Ten Sports in cable homes across India as well as on DD in the hope and belief that justice will (finally) prevail.”

    According to Taj Television India Pvt Ltd MD Sharmista Rijhwani, “Today’s judgment from the Supreme Court is a landmark judgment and Taj India appreciates the statesmanship and balance with which the judiciary provided comfort to the public as well as assured Taj India of recovery of its commercial losses.”

    Asked about the claims of compensation being, made by Ten; Sarma said that his orgnaisation would convey to the court the losses that DD would incur by transmitting the Ten signals in toto – complete with ad and logo.

    The Supreme Court, however, has directed that Doordarshan would carry the logo of Ten Sports along with its ads half an hour before and after a match and during breaks would not carry any ad booked by it.

    Finding that the issues involved in the case were contentious – at one time Ten Sports’ lawyers, reportedly, expressed his objection to the signals for the Test matches – the court has fixed 15 April for the final hearing of the Special Leave Petition (SLP) of Taj TV India Pvt. Ltd. seeking to quash the interim orders of the high courts of Chennai and Mumbai, which had directed that DD be made available the live signals by Ten.

    Both the parties concerned, however, maintained after the court observation that they are ready for an out of court settlement, provided the other party makes the first move.

    Doordarshan was also directed to see that the signals beamed on DD National channel are as much restricted and remain within India. It was made clear that DD should use a satellite that should not cover Middle East at any cost and avoid beaming its signals to Far East, if technically possible.

    The court also issued notice to Doordarshan on a contempt petition filed by Taj India, which alleged that Doordarshan showed its advertisements during the telecast of the one dayer yesterday during the break.

    After having made his ‘dharma’ and ‘karma’ clear, Sarma said, “We’d abide by whatever the court has said and the ad (in the past) had been booked by us as the court had been silent on this aspect earlier.”

    But in the public interest, several hundred millions of rupees of Indian taxpayers’ money is likely to be lost, though government officials today indicated that a law would be brought forward soon, which would make it mandatory for the national broadcaster, DD, to be made available terrestrial 
    signals of any event of national importance by any telecast rights holder on mutually agreed commercial terms.