Back to square one for Doordarshan

DD had sought the live cricket feed to show the matches on its terrestrial network, which ESPN rejected, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Published on: Nov 17, 2006, 21:21:00 IST

None | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The gruelling India-South Africa cricket series may not be available on the Doordarshan’s platform as ESPN-Star Sports have refused to share feed with the public broadcaster.

The rights’ holder has quoted precedent to deny the feed to DD, even though it is mandated under the downlinking and uplinking guidelines of the ministry of Information and Broadcasting.

At a meeting with Prasar Bharati officials on Thursday, the broadcasters quoted two foreign series involving India for not sharing the feed. They were India-Pakistan series, whose rights were with Ten Sports and the BCCI Cup in Kaula Lampur, shown exclusively by Zee Sports. “DD has recently set a precedent and we are going by that,” Managing Director, ESPN, R C Venkatesh told Hindustan Times.

While Venkatesh said that DD has not formally approached ESPN for sharing the cricket feed for the series, DDA officials pointed out that the issue was discussed in detail on Thursday with ESPN officials. “They have offered us 90 minutes highlights of the day’s pay which is not acceptable to us,” a senior DD official said.

DD has sought the live cricket feed to show the matches on its terrestrial network, which ESPN has rejected. Till Friday evening, the impasse prevailed even as DD officials were confident that the issue will be resolved by Saturday, a day before first one day international match between India and South Africa. “As of today we are not showing the matches,” a DD official confirmed.

ESPN has already moved Supreme Court against the downlinking policy making it mandatory for the sports broadcasters to share feed with DD. On the other hand, the I&B ministry is contemplating to bring a legislation in the winter session of Parliament to make sharing of feed as part of broadcasting laws.

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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