DD penny-wise, an event of national importance

Courtesy:   www.telegraphindia.com

SUMI SUKANYA

New Delhi, July 23: The Commonwealth Games (CWG) that kicked off in Glasgow will be shown on DD News instead of the usual DD Sports because of a revenue-driven tussle with a private channel in which the public broadcaster had its way.

For viewers, it means the CWG telecasts till August 3 would be interspersed with news bulletins.

At the heart of the move is the row with Ten Sports, which holds the rights to the games but is required to share live feed of "events of national importance" — CWG is considered as such — with the government broadcaster under law.

Under the law, the Prasar Bharati Act, DD gets 25 per cent of the ad revenues and the "original content rights owner", Ten Sports in this case, 75 per cent.

Officials of Prasar Bharati, the public broadcaster that runs DD and All India Radio, have long complained that the current revenue-sharing system is loaded against them and want it changed to 50:50.

Usually, events like CWG are shown on DD National — a "terrestrial network", meaning it can be accessed without a cable connection and is therefore thought to have wider reach — or DD Sports, available only on cable and DTH.

However, internal estimates suggested that DD National would suffer a loss of Rs 2.5 crore every day, totalling Rs 27.5 crore in the 11 days of the games because regular programmes would have to be shuffled.

Jawhar Sircar

The anticipated losses would have occurred as the CWG telecasts would have drawn fewer ads than the more popular regular entertainment shows, officials said. Also, the private broadcaster would have got 75 per cent of the kitty.

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