NEW DELHI: President A. P. J. Abdul Kalam on Friday night gave assent to `The Sports Broadcasting Signals (Mandatory Sharing with Prasar Bharati) Ordinance, 2007,' which makes it mandatory for rights holders of sporting events to share advertisement-free live broadcast signals with all platforms of the public broadcaster on a revenue-sharing basis.

Assent secured

The assent was secured after a meeting between Mr. Kalam and Union Minister for Information & Broadcasting Priyaranjan Dasmunsi. The President apparently sought to know the rationale for the Ordinance and how it serves public interest.

The Ministry's contention is that rights holders were in effect hoarding the terrestrial rights as the Prasar Bharati is the only terrestrial broadcaster.

``The private players buy across-the-board rights for terrestrial, satellite, Internet, mobiles, merchandise, ..... Prasar Bharati cannot participate in such a bid,'' is the Ministry's counter to questions on why the public broadcaster does not bid for broadcast rights in the first place.

Also, according to the Ministry, showing live cricket is not a profitable proposition for Prasar Bharati; approximately Rs.12 crore is lost per test match series. Further, the Ministry is pointing out that even within the revenue-sharing model provided in the ordinance, Prasar Bharati is committed to spending a major portion of the 25 per cent it will get on promoting sports that attract no sponsorships.

As per the ordinance, Prasar Bharati will market the matches and give 75 per cent of the revenue earned to the rights holder. Of the remaining 25 per cent, five to six per cent will go into operational costs and the remaining amount used to promote sports such as archery, which languish for sponsorships.

Committee

A committee has been set up under the Chief Executive Officer of Prasar Bharati to look into the possibility of bringing the Doordarshan's Sports Channel on to the terrestrial network to address the demand of rights holders for encrypting the signals they have to share with the public broadcaster.

Though a technical committee is to be set up to examine the possibility of encrypting the live feed from sports rights holders to Doordarshan's national network, Mr. Dasmunsi is understood to have told the Cabinet that it would be well nigh impossible to send across a message to neighbouring countries should such a need arise during a match beamed live in India on an encrypted signal.

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