Pvt broadcasters will have to give DD live feed of matches: Govt

“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.

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.

With the ordinance in place private broadcasters will have to share the feed of the much-awaited World Cup cricket series beginning in the West Indies in March.

Perhaps to avoid taking the issue right back to court and to cushion the blow to the private broadcaster, who has bought rights for a hefty sum from the cricket board, the minister announced that a technical committee would find means of encryption to ensure there is no piracy of feed.

Dasmunsi said the ordinance, and later the law, would prove beneficial for sports less popular than cricket, like hockey, football, boxing, kho-kho.

The Centre has also proposed penalties, including suspension of licence etc, for violation of the terms and conditions of the ordinance.

Nimbus welcomed the government’s decision to consider encryption of DD channel while sharing sports telecast with private sports broadcasters, though the matter appeared headed to the courts.

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