Comedy Central to go off air for 6 days

Starting 12.01 am on November 26, Comedy Central to go blank for 6 days following a Delhi HC order for broadcasting offensive content.

The Ministry had issued Show Cause Notice (SCN) in June 2012 to Comedy Central for telecast of the said programmes which appeared to violate the following provisions of the Cable Television Networks Rules, 1994.

The channel has been under the scanner for about two years now for two of their shows – ‘Stand Up Club’ and Popcorn’. Allegedly they had broadcasted offensive content on air and this is the reason why the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting had banned two of these shows.

Viacom had then appealed to the court, and the court gave its judgement on Monday. Since at the time the appeal was filed, the ban had already been in force for four days, the penalty regarding the remaining six days will come into force now.

Upholding the ban imposed by the ministry of information and broadcasting (MIB) on 17 May 2013, the bench noted that it had gone through the allegedly offensive content and found “that the punishment meted out is proportionate to the violations and justly meets the collective cry of the society” and proceeded to impose costs of Rs.20, 000 on the company.

According to the MIB, Popcorn was aired in July 2012 and appeared vulgar, obscene and against good taste. It did not appear suitable for unrestricted public exhibition and children.
In Popcorn, some members of the programme crew were shown playing pranks in public. They performed some strange and absurd acts that surprised the common people/passerby, who were completely unaware of the hidden camera capturing the whole scene.

The channel stands to lose about Rs.60 lakh in total including advertising revenue and distribution revenue (paid to multi system operators), according to estimates by media buyers. Typically a niche channel draws ad revenue of Rs.7 lakh per day which makes it an ad revenue loss Rs.40-45 lakh for the penalty period. The distribution revenue loss would be about Rs.17-18 lakh.