The Hindu : DD breached contract, says Ten Sports

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Mar 14, 2004

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National

DD breached contract, says Ten Sports

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI, MARCH 13. The Prasar Bharati-Ten Sports "muscle-flexing" over telecast rights of the India-Pakistan cricket series continued today. The satellite channel, which has the global radio and television rights to the series being held in Pakistan, provided live telecast signals of the match "free of cost" to Doordarshan and cable television operators as per its undertaking to the Supreme Court on Friday.

However, Doordarshan initially aired the match on the national network without the Ten Sports logo. Also, it broke away from the satellite channel's "feed" in between the overs to air its own advertisements. While it began displaying the Ten Sports logo about two-and-a-half hours into the match, it continued with its own advertising all through, earning Rs. 10.96 crores by selling 5,000 seconds at the rate of Rs. 2 lakhs per 10 seconds.

Asked about the Ten Sports complaint vis-à-vis Doordarshan not showing its logo and advertisements as ordered by the Madras High Court on Friday, K.S. Sarma, Chief Executive Officer, Prasar Bharati, said the telecast of the match was as per court ruling. "According to the Attorney-General, the Supreme Court ruling was silent on Ten Sports' advertisements."

Onthe initial absence of the Ten Sports logo, he said: "We took the `clean feed' (which has no logo or advertisements) they were providing us to create our highlights package. When they shut off their `clean feed', we switched to the feed being shown on Ten Sports minus the advertisements."

However, upset by Prasar Bharati's interpretation of the order to "suit its convenience," Ten Sports dashed off a letter to Doordarshan today saying that it was being "dishonest." Kapil Sibal, lawyer for the satellite channel, said that "what they have done is not only mischievous, but also dishonest, and even amounts to breach of our contract with Prasar Bharati for the highlights package."

Apparently, Ten Sports had given its "clean signal" to Doordarshan to allow the channel to create the hour-long highlights package as per the contract. "They began showing it live on Doordarshan instead of the "dirty signal" (television parlance for signals carrying channel logo and advertisements) we were giving on our own channel. We then shut off the `clean signal' after which they were forced to take our `dirty signal'. But in between overs, they would switch that off to show their own advertisements."

What has peeved Ten Sports particularly is that Prasar Bharati which had left no stone unturned to get telecast rights of the match on grounds of "national interest" should have "suddenly turned commercial and tried to make a killing from today's match."

Worse still, for the satellite channel, Doordarshan's national network, by virtue of being on terrestrial mode, had the advantage of being ahead of Ten Sports by a fraction of a second despite the match being "simulcast."

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