Govt seeks consensus on TV content

The government has initiated a move to reach an agreement with the private broadcasters on the issue of sharing content with public broadcaster Prasar Bharati.

The government, which plans to make it mandatory for the private operators to share the broadcasting feed with Prasar Bharati, wants to reach a broad understanding on the issue before fianlising the uplinking and downlinking policies.

The government is also considering setting up a committee to list out the events of national importance to be included in the uplinking policy.

The committee will comprise officials from the ministry of information and broadcasting, ministry of sports, Prasar Bharati, private broadcasters and marketing agencies. A decision to this effect was taken at a meeting of private broadcasters with the government last week.

"We have been sharing feed of various events with the public broadcasters. The policy will institutionalise it. We have made certain suggestions," said a senior executive with a private sports broadcaster.

The broadcasters have suggested in the meeting that Prasar Bharati will have the option to acquire live terrestrial rights for all one-day internationals to be played by India from the broadcasters owning rights.

This includes matches that played in India and outside the country. The private broadcaster, in the meeting, has agreed to share the content with Prasar Bharati on a 75:25 per cent basis, in the favor of the rights holder. However, no proposal has been made on who will sell the advertisement time.

The private broadcasters have also said the condition of sharing of content should not be applicable to broadcast rights acquired earlier and should be applicable to events held after the law is passed.

Besides, they have also expressed reservations on sharing the content on Doordarshan's DTH platform. Besides, it has also been proposed that Prasar Bharati will get an hour-long highlight package of all Test matches being played by India.

Broadcasters have also proposed that to protect the subscription revenue of private broadcasters, the terrestrial signals of Prasar Bharati will be encrypted.

Meanwhile, sources said Prasar Bharati and Ten Sports are working on to reach an agreement on the sharing of live feed of the final of the Indian Oil tri nation tournament being played in Sri Lanka.