SC reserves hearing on Prasar Bharati

Prasar Bharati today ruled out the possibility of running separate channels for showing ICC Cricket World Cup Live matches. Like said by their advocate earlier this week that it is not possible for them to come up with a channel for the same.

The Supreme Court later reserved orders on the appeal made by Prasar Bharati as against the order of the Delhi High Court, which had earlier this month directed DD not to share live feeds of the matches with cable operators.

Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justic Pinaki Chandra Ghose could manage to extend the interim order allowing DD to telecast the matches.

A senior advocate on behalf of Star Sports suggested that Prasar Bharati could create a mirror image of the World Cup telecast, which does not go to cable operators.

Star Sports said their experts could help the broadcaster in showing entertainment programmes on its channel at the same time when World Cup telecast is on.

Prasar Bharti’s Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi said that this was technically not feasible.

Rohatgi denied a conflict made by Star Sports advocate that DD had in fact set up a separate channel at the time of the last Commonwealth Games. He also mentioned that the channel had could merely manage in keeping with the Games.

Star Sports and Prasar Bharati filed their respective additional affidavits as directed by the Court on 17 February.

In an affidavit, Star Sports had said that it had incurred a loss of Rs. 290 crore last year for sharing sports signals with DD and was expected to incur a further loss of Rs. 120 crore for the World Cup alone this year.

A bench of Justices Badar Durrez Ahmed and Sanjeev Sachdeva passed the order on the plea of Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), ESPN and Star who had contended that cable TV operators were getting live feeds through DD channels free of cost, resulting in loss of revenue for them.

According to earlier media reports the order, the Court had said, “The appeal as well as writ petition (civil) 8458/2007 are allowed to the extent that the live broadcasting signal shared by ESPN/STAR by virtue of the Sports Act with Prasar Bharati, shall not be carried in the designated Doordarshan channels under the must carry obligation cast by the Cable TV Network Act on cable operators. This shall operate prospectively.”

BCCI, Nimbus Communications Ltd and the two sports channels (ESPN and Star) had challenged the High Court's single judge in November 2007 order rejecting their pleas that no cable television network, Direct-to-Home (DTH) Network, multi-system network or local cable operator could broadcast such sports events without a licence from the content owners.