November 2012

2/11/12 -- Taj TV Ltd has retained the television broadcast rights for West Indies cricket for a period of seven years from January 2013.

What US couldn't do in 7 years, we did in 7 months

Finally the day of reckoning has come for I&B Ministry after the digital era dawns on 1st November and people endorse its claim of a grand success in digitalizing the cable TV industry in the four metros. This will also pave way for the second phase of the process where thirty eight cities with million plus population are included. There is not enough time left for this phase also as the deadline is 31st March 2012, just five months. What I did not like was the way Ministry officials pressurized the LCOs and the consumers through threatening advertisements joined by DTH operators who had nothing to do with digitalization of cable TV.

Well fought LCOs, Ministry is the Winner

Finally the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting declared itself a winner in the race to seed maximum STB to implement digitisation in the four metros of Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai. The success came on the night of 31 October when in a press release the Ministry declared itself a winner and gave consolation prize to MSO DEN for seeding maximum STBs in a single day in Delhi. According to the release-

The Last Battle of Digitalization

I still feel our whole exercise of digitalising the cable TV networks is out of focus. Right from drafting the amended law to making various regulations and then implementing them, Government is only concerned that all pay channels must reach viewers and be paid by the subscribers whether they like or not. Once the process started, stringent deadlines, tougher than anywhere in the world were announced. Now ministry's objective seems to be to show complete success in their exercise in the first phase, come what may. It reduced the base line of Cable TV households than what it had been considering since January this year to show higher percentage of STB penetration. Not only this, they have reduced the number of analog TV households by DTH homes in the metros so that number of yet to be digitized cable homes becomes low.

So now with the new figures, supposed to be based on Census 2011, Mumbai has achieved 95%, Chennai 49%, Kolkata 67% and Delhi lags behind with 53% STB penetration. These are quite impressive figures considering that USA and UK took 10 years to achieve this penetration. If we believe these figures then the LCOs must get the complete credit because it is they who do the job of convincing the subscribers to spend money on STB and then pay much more to the pay channels. It is sad that they get the minimum revenue for this.

October 2012

2/10/12 -- ZEE TV celebrated its 20th anniversary.

Who are we fooling ?

The progress of digitalization is being monitored by Information & Broadcasting Ministry and the review suggests about 68% of the digitalization had already been achieved in the 4 metro cities of Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai by mid September. According to the Cable Television Networks (Regulation) Amendment Act 2011, it is mandatory for the cable distribution companies to switch from Analogue Cable Television Network to Digital Addressable System (DAS) by end of December 2014 in entire country in 4 phases. For the digitalization process, the installation of set top boxes (STBs) in the television viewing homes with Cable television is a necessary pre-condition for the digital switch over. The ministry has reviewed the digitalization data by taking into account census data of year 2011. The same data has also been verified with the help of data received from MSOs and DTH companies.

September 2012

1/9/12 -- The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Information Technology has strongly criticised the I&B Ministry for never having 'bothered' to monitor the implementation of the Cable Television Networks (Regulation) Act 1995, a central legislation.