| According to sources in Zee Telefilms, the parent company
of Siti Cable, the new commercial deal offer was sent yesterday. The
deal offers One Alliance around 50 per cent of the revenue that the
Sony, Discovery and HBO channels mop up at present as subscription
revenue once they come on to the HITS platform.
The sources said that talks would be opened on similar lines with
ESPN-Star Sports shortly.
The One Alliance channels, comprising Sony, AXN, SET Max, HBO,
Discovery and Animal Planet, had been taken off the prime band on
Siti Cable networks in various cities, including the metros of Delhi
and Mumbai, owing to differences on the HITS project and Sony's
apprehensions on joining the platform promoted by Zee Telefilms'
cable arm.
One Alliance president Shantonu Aditya, however, pointed out that
there was more than just commercial issues to be resolved. Aditya
said, "We have asked them (Siti) for certain technical and
legal clarifications regarding their HITS plan, for which we are
still awaiting a response. It is only after this that the commercial
aspects can be discussed."
With the 1 September deadline for the first phase area-wise rollout
of conditional access system almost round the corner, Siti Cable
is aggressively pushing its HITS project through which it's implementing
addressability in Indian cable homes in a digital format. The HITS
project is being marketed under the brand name Galaxzee.
One Alliance apart, even Star India has not yet agreed to join
the Zee-promoted HITS platform citing reservations on 'turning around'
of channels from India after they are downlinked at Zee's master
control room for CAS encryption, which would amount to uplinking
from India, according to Star.
Star India CEO Peter Mukerjea had gone on record on 14 August after
a meeting of the CAS implementation panel saying that Star and Sony
channels had not yet agreed to join Zee's HITS platform. The repartee
from Mukerjea came after Zee Telefilms vice-chairman Jawahar Goel,
standing in for his elder brother Subhash Chandra, had reiterated
during the meeting that Siti cable would offer all pay channels
for Rs 128 when CAS is rolled out.
Meanwhile, yesterday Zee also started the test signals of its KU-band
television transmission through which a direct-to-home (DTH) service
would be provided under the brand name Dish TV. Zee had said that
it would ideally like to launch its DTH service along with CAS on
1 September.
|
