The Union Cabinet on Thursday decided to bring in an ordinance to make it mandatory for private broadcasters to share live, ad-free feed of important sporting events with Prasar Bharati.

“I hope the ordinance can be notified before the February 8 Indo-Sri Lanka cricket match,” said Union Information & Broadcasting Minister Priya Ranjan Dasmunsi.

The decision comes in the wake of a broadcaster, Nimbus Communications-run Neosports’s refusal to share with Doordarshan and AIR rights for the India-West Indies ODIs, blanking out radio listeners and homes without cable connection.

The Delhi High Court had then ruled that Doordarshan and AIR would have access to the match feed — with ads, and also a seven-minute lag.

The proposed ordinance reverses this: all private broadcasters will be bound to share the feed of such sporting events of national importance as may be prescribed by the Central Government with Doordarshan and AIR — without ads and without lag.

The ordinance will be replaced by an act of Parliament, for which a bill will be brought in the forthcoming budget session. The ordinance will come into retrospective effect — from Novermber 11, 2005, on which downlinking guidelines for television channels were issued.

Dasmunsi said the ad-free feed that the public broadcaster got could be marketed by whoever gets higher revenue, which would shared 75:25 by the broadcaster and Prasar Bharati.

All platforms of Prasar Bharati, including its DTH service, will be able to broadcast the feed. However, for Test matches, live feed will be required only for matches played in India. For those played abroad, match highlights alone would suffice.

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