The Hindu : `Doordarshan will incur heavy losses'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Mar 18, 2004

National

National

`Doordarshan will incur heavy losses'

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI, MARCH 17. Now that it has been decided that the remaining matches of the India-Pakistan cricket series will be telecast simultaneously on Doordarshan and Ten Sports, both channels are busy calculating their losses while indicating a willingness to strike an "out-of-court settlement."

Also, in view of this experience, the Prasar Bharati is likely to ``revise'' its policy of not bidding for matches played overseas.

While the Prasar Bharati Chief Executive Officer, K.S. Sarma, conceded that Doordarshan would incur huge losses owing to today's Supreme Court order, he refused to see the developments in terms of ``victory or defeat'', and, instead, said: ``We see it as our `dharma' (duty) to show the cricket matches in public interest.''

Briefing mediapersons, Mr. Sarma said: ``Prasar Bharati has never bid for matches played overseas as it involves astronomical amounts and a public broadcaster cannot take such risks.''

However, he conceded that there was a need to review this policy, provided the amounts involved were reasonable.

Critical of Ten Sports for not giving Doordarshan signals to this series — since the public broadcaster alone has the terrestrial rights in India — Mr. Sarma said what they did ``amounts to electronic hoarding.'' Still, he was optimistic that this chapter in Indian broadcasting would pave the way for a law that would ensure the public broadcaster rights to events of national importance.

As for the charge that Doordarshan showed the first two matches on PAS-10 — which has a trans-continental footprint — he said this was not the case as Doordarshan's national network had been on INSAT-2E for the past two years. About the direction that Doordarshan should ensure no spillage of signals across the country's borders, he said that would be impossible as the reach of even INSAT-2E extended beyond the shores.

However, he did commit that the signals would not be available in the Middle East that was a major area of concern for Ten Sports.

Though Doordarshan was reluctant to quantify its losses, sources maintained that the loss was to the tune of at least Rs. 70 crores. Since the carriage cost of showing the matches on Doordarshan is approximately Rs. 3 crore a day, telecasting this series which runs into 20 days will cost the public broadcaster Rs. 60 crores under this head alone.

Add to this the opportunity cost of approximately Rs. 10 crores because it will have to surrender its scheduled programmes to show the series.

But, what is pinching Doordarshan the most is the loss of advertisement revenue since the public broadcaster in anticipation of securing the terrestrial rights, had apparently tied up advertisements for about Rs. 100 crores.

Just on the first match — during which it sold 5,000 seconds of airtime — Doordarshan made Rs. 11.96 crores.

Despite the impact on their business on the cable front, Taj Television India — the Indian end of Taj Television Dubai which owns Ten Sports — welcomed the Supreme Court judgment and was appreciative of the ``statesmanship and balance with which the judiciary provided comfort to the public as well as assured us recovery of commercial losses''.

Meanwhile, the president of Cable Distribution Network, Lalit Kumar Modi, estimated the damages suffered by his company through which Ten Sports is distributed in India on the cable network to be Rs. 208 crores.

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