Click to play videoNew Delhi: The Union Cabinet on Thursday approved an ordinance that makes it mandatory for private broadcasters to share live feed, without advertisements, of sporting events of national importance with public broadcaster, Prasar Bharati's Doordarshan and All India Radio.
The government will introduce a Bill in the Budget Session of Parliament to make the ordinance a law.
This ordinance applies to matches in India and abroad. A committee will be formed comprising members of Prasar Bharati and the Board of Control for Cricket in India to determine the technical feasibility of feed encryption, which restricts the DD feed to India.
Union Minister for Information and Broadcasting P R Dasmunsi hoped that the ordinance would be notified before the start of the India-Sri Lanka series, which starts on February 8.
After the ordinance comes into effect those who don’t have cable connections in their home and radio listeners would be able to receive live feed of Team India's One-Day matches, wherever it plays.
But the Test matches would not be shown live
However, for Test matches, the government has said live feed would be required only for matches played in India while for those played abroad, the highlights would be sufficient.
The decision is bound to irk private broadcasters.
Private broadcasters like Nimbus and Sony TV have paid thousands of crores for rights to matches in India and the upcoming World Cup.
They will now have to give the feed free to Doordarshan. In return DD will give them 75 per cent of the ad revenues to the broadcaster.
"The revenues will be shared on a 75:25 basis, with the big portion going to the private broadcaster," Dasmunsi said.
He added that a technical committee would look into the matter of encrypting the signals being telecast by Prasar Bharati's Doordarshan to make sure that the feed is not accessed by broadcasters outside India.
The government's move to bring in a law to rein in private broadcasters comes as no surprise in the face of their denial to share telecast, despite there being a provision in the uplinking/downlinking regulations to do so. Dasmunsi said
'The Sports Broadcasting Signals (Mandatory Sharing with Prasar Bharati) Ordinance 2007', which would ensure telecast sharing on all platforms of Prasar Bharati including DTH, would be replaced in the Parliament by an Act for which a Bill would be tabled in the coming Budget session.
The list of sporting events that have to be shared will be short-listed soon.
The government would consult various sporting bodies to decide which are of national interest.
However, he added that encryption was not possible immediately and would require around seven months if at all he government decided to go for it. "There are 1,400 centres where we have to encrypt. We have to see how to get equipment and how to go about the process," he said.
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