Private sports broadcasters to pay for Doordarshan's free lunch

The government wants DD to have its fill of the sports broadcast cake. And make private channels foot the bill

The I&B ministry has proposed changes to an Act that requires private sports channels to share live feed of nationally important events with Doordarshan

The amendment will allow DD to air these events on private cable and DTH platforms, in addition to its own networks

This will cut directly into the subscription revenue and viewership of private sports broadcasters

The move is likely to open a larger can of worms and affect the entire sports broadcasting ecosystem

There is a new war brewing in sports broadcasting. Between private sports broadcasters and state-owned Prasar Bharati. And if the latter is victorious, private sports broadcasters stand to lose. Substantially.

Earlier this week, the information and broadcasting (I&B) ministry proposed an amendment to the decade-old Sports Broadcasting Signals (Mandatory Sharing with Prasar Bharati) Act, 2007. The Act requires private sports broadcasters such as Star India and Sony to share their live feeds of sporting events that are of national importance with the public broadcaster. Prasar Bharati, which runs television network Doordarshan (DD) and All India Radio, then retransmits the broadcast signals on its terrestrial network and its own direct-to-home (DTH) platform, DD Free Dish.

AUTHOR

Harveen Ahluwalia

In her last assignment, Harveen was at Mint, the business daily published by HT Media. At Mint, where she spent about two years, she wrote stories on retail, food and the media business. Harveen is a B.Com (H) graduate from Shri Ram College of Commerce, University of Delhi. She has a diploma in journalism from the Times School of Journalism. Like many folks at The Ken, Harveen talks and tweets a lot. When she isn’t writing or reading, she likes to sketch and doodle. She can be reached at harveen at the-ken dot com.

View Full Profile