DD may miss Twenty20 action

Mahender Singh Dhoni and his boys would be missing from millions of Indian television sets as the government failed to anticipate how big Twenty20 cricket would be in near future, Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Aug 11, 2007, 04:13:39 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Mahender Singh Dhoni and his boys would be missing from millions of Indian television sets as the government failed to anticipate how big Twenty20 cricket would be in near future.

Unlike one-day matches and test matches, sharing the feed of Twenty20 cricket matches involving India with Prasar Bharati is not mandatory for the broadcaster. So about 85 per cent of cricket viewers, who get terrestrial signal from Doordarshan, would miss Team India’s fireworks in South Africa. Twenty20 cricket is dubbed as the sport for the younger generation. Star cricketers like Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid and Saurav Ganguly also admitted this while ruling themselves out of the Twenty20 World Cup, starting from September 11.

Game in trouble

Sharing the feed of Twenty20 matches involving India with PrasarBharati is not mandatory for the broadcaster

About 85 per cent of viewers, who get terrestrial signal from Doordarshan, would miss India in action

The Govtis looking at other options to show matches on DD channels

The Information and Broadcasting Ministry missed out Twenty20 cricket when they got the law passed by Parliament on mandatory feed share earlier this year. “We never anticipated Twenty20 cricket could be so popular,” an I&B ministry official admitted.

ESPN-Star Sports, which holds rights for the cricket extravaganza is marketing the event as exclusive on the group’s three sports channels ESPN, Star Sports and Star Cricket. Asked if the matches involving India would be shared with Doordarshan, Managing Director of ESPN sports, RC Venkatesh, said, “we will follow the law.”

The law does not include Twenty20 matches for mandatory sharing with DD.

But anticipating huge viewership, the I&B ministry has asked Prasar Bharati to look into the possibility of showing the matches on Doordarshan channels. The ministry feels the matches can be shown on Doordarshan if a proper revenue sharing model is worked out. Under the law on mandatory feed sharing, the revenue sharing model is 75:25 in favour of the broadcaster. However, broadcasters have demanded up to 90 per cent revenue for the cricket feed.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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