The government is sticking to its guns as far as the issue of a sectoral cap of 20 per cent for setting up a Direct-to-Home (DTH) TV platform is concerned despite all pleas from broadcasters.

Information and Broadcasting Minister Sushma Swaraj on Wednesday was quite categorical in an interview to the Financial Express that there would be no changes made to the original DTH guidelines.

Swaraj‘s consistent refrain on the subject despite strong lobbying indicates that entry into the DTH club will prove virtually impossible for most aspirants. There is a distinct possibility that when DTH does take off, there may be only one or at the most two competing players.

And with the government‘s own Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited (VSNL) announcing the formation of a five-member panel to chalk out its entry into DTH it all seems pretty well sewed up on that front. Who else if at all any remains to be seen.

The meeting of the Group of Ministers (GoM) on convergence, scheduled for Thursday, has been postponed till further notice.

The dilly-dallying on the issue raises serious doubts regarding Minister for Information Technology Pramod Mahajan‘s assurance in New Delhi on Wednesday. He said the Government would try its best to introduce the bill in the Budget session. "We will introduce the Bill in the Budget session. It will then go to the standing committee. We hope to clear it either in the Monsoon session or the Winter session this year,‘‘ he said.

Mahajan said that it was yet to be decided who would pilot the bill in Parliament. The three ministries directly involved with the bill are the ministries of Information & Broadcasting, Communications and Information Technology.

Minister for Information and Broadcasting Sushma Swaraj had said in Bangalore almost a month ago (9 December) that the Government proposed to introduce the bill during the budget Session. Since then the GoM has not met.

The GoM last met on 6 December and sent the Convergence Bill draft back to jurist Fali Nariman who headed the sub-group which wrote it in the first place.

So where is the redrafted draft. Last heard the GoM was slated to meet once again on 21 December and send the redrafted draft to the Cabinet. That meeting was also deferred. The reason - members of the group were busy with Parliament proceedings.

1) Rupert Murdoch‘s India visit. The revival of Star Plus under Peter Mukerjea and its great success following Kaun Banega Crorepati and Amitabh Bachchan.
) The arrival of Kerry Packer in India and the appointment of the first Indian woman TV CEO Ravina Raj Kohli at Channel Nine. (Chandni Sehgal headed MTV India before and during its launch but was general manager of the channel and left soon thereafter .)

3) The rise and fall of Zee Telefilms.

4) The hype around Richard Li‘s NOW convergence project.

5) The IPO fever amongst wannabe stock market media darlings and the concurrent disenchantment.

6) The dot com acquisition craze by broadcasters and the subsequent collapse.

7) The failure of cricket as a programming genre because of corruption in the sport.

8) The rise of the new television companies - Balaji Telefilms, Cinevista, Nimbus, Broadcast Worldwide, Hathway, etc.

9) The revival of DD under RR Shah through the route of privatisation and commercialisation.

10) The continuing spate of announcements around broadcasting and convergence legislation and the lack of follow up thereafter.