Bipin Chandran: A captain's knock for Prasar Bharati

BACKSTAGE

The telecast rights for the current India-Australia cricket series were all set to go to Sony Entertainment Television (SET). With just a few days to go for the series to begin, the Board of Control for Cricket (BCCI) announced in Kolkata that SET was the chosen one and its decision was final.

Till state-owned Prasar Bharati came from behind and bagged the rights. It was another feather in the cap of its CEO K S Sarma.

A 1968 batch IAS officer from the Andhra Pradesh cadre, Sarma, 60, was always unwilling to give up with the rights for the four Test matches of the Kangaroos' tour.

He told reporters the same day that he was very much in the race for the telecast rights for all BCCI matches for the next four years "" a pot of gold for any broadcaster who finally gets the rights.

Ever since he took over as the Prasar Bharati CEO in 2002, Sarma is seen by many as one of the strongest forces in the world of broadcasting.

He was quick to make a mark for himself, though it must be said that he was not a stranger to broadcasting, having worked as director general of Doordarshan between 1996 and 1998 when he was also joint secretary (broadcasting).

Like any result-oriented CEO, Sarma has always managed to get things done for Prasar Bharati. First, the state broadcaster muscled its way in and got the Abdul Rehman Bukhatir-promoted Ten Sports to share with it the feed for the historic India-Pakistan series.

Then, after some gentle persuasion from Sarma, the government came out with the rule that the live telecast of any event of national importance will compulsorily have to be shared with the public broadcaster.

And now, the rights for the India-Australia series. Prasar Bharati had originally rejected the BCCI offer.

On September 22, after the cricket board cancelled the tendering of cricket telecast rights for the next four years, Jagmohan Dalmia contacted Sarma and offered Prasar Bharati the telecast rights of the India-Australia series for $ 2 million a day. Sarma refused the offer pointing out that the price was very steep.

Dalmia then offered the same deal to other broadcasters. But, much to Sarma's delight, no broadcaster was willing to take the offer out of a fear of being dragged to the court and wanted BCCI to indemnify them.

When BCCI managed to seal a contract with SET for telecast and Ten Sports for production, Sarma began his second round of manoeuvering.

He threatened to take BCCI and Dalmia to court for not giving the telecast rights to the third highest bidder. BCCI subsequently came back to Sarma for negotiations.

Realising BCCI's predicament, with Cricket Australia threatening to withdraw the Australian tour if the telecast rights were not settled, Sarma, with the government's backing, got the best deal.

He got the contract for less than half the price that BCCI demanded in the beginning. BCCI's revenue share agreement with Prasar Bharati provides that the state-run broadcaster will share the revenue with the cricket board only if it earns over Rs 200 crore.

Prasar Bharati is on its way to recovering the bid price, with advertisement spots worth over Rs 100 crore already sold out.

Sarma has some huge plans for Prasar Bharati. The most ambitious one "" the direct-to-home telecast service of Prasar Bharati"" was stuck because the funds required were really huge.

In fact, there were rumours at one stage that the finance ministry had even turned down the proposal. Again, Sarma managed to get the government's approval by pointing out that the service was needed to reach the rural market and would not require huge investments since it could be managed with the existing infrastructure. The project will be launched by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh soon.

Is there a lesson in all of this for private sector CEOs?