CHENNAI : Thousands of cable TV viewers in the city were unable to watch the Australia-West Indies cricket match at the tri-nation cricket tournament in Malaysia on Tuesday.

Zee Sports channel, which holds the exclusive rights for the telecast, was not available even on set top boxes of cable TV subscribers in Chennai. The encrypted channel was shown as a part of Zee-Turner bouquet, literally as a free-to-air channel until just a few days ago.

The sudden unavailability of the channel has cast a shadow on whether cricket fans will be able to see the remaining matches in the tournaments, especially the ones featuring the Indian cricket team.

Till 8.30 p.m. on Tuesday, there was no official statement from either the Zee Group or the Sumangali Cable Vision, the biggest multi-system operator in the state, on the reasons for the blackout.

The channel was available however on Zee's direct-to-home (DTH) service Dish TV and Hathway Cable Network. Since the Zee-Turner group is yet to come up with a formal arrangement with Tata-Sky to share their content, the live telecast of the match was not available on Tata-Sky DTH service. According to sources in Zee Group, the network has stopped showing Zee Sports on cable networks with which it did not have any formal agreements.

A Zee representative pointed out it was the first major tournament being shown on Zee Sports and the channel had acquired the rights at an exorbitant sum. So they were not willing to share the content for free. They also faced issues of piracy of the signals if they did not encrypt the channel.

Viewers angry

Several viewers were angry that they were not even informed the reasons for the sudden blackout. C.S. Ganesan, a resident of K.K.Nagar, pointed out that such occurrences were regular in Chennai, which is the only city in the country where conditional access system has been adopted.

"Why is it that cricket fans face this sort of a situation ahead of every major tournament," he asked.

Disgruntled viewers said consumers always ended up on the losing side in the politics between broadcasters and cable networks.

They wanted to know why they were not informed on the reasons for the blackout in advance.

Meanwhile, Tamizhaga Cable TV Operator's General Welfare Association has condemned the Zee Group for increasing the price of the bouquet featuring Zee Sports at a short notice. They have appealed to all cable networks in the state to boycott all channels of the group.

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