Southern States - Tamil Nadu-Chennai   

Cable operators to stop transmission for a day

By K.Manikandan

CHENNAI APRIL 1. A majority of television channels in the city will go blank from Thursday morning to Friday morning as cable operators have decided to stop transmission to protest the "confrontationist" attitude of the broadcasters and the Multi System Operators (MSOs). This was decided at a meeting of the Chennai District Cable TV Operators Integrated Committee today.

They said the decision was taken as they realised that the broadcasters and the MSOs had failed to reach an agreement on issues that cropped up in the past few days.

Pointing out that they were dragged into the controversy, they said their protests would not stop with that if things did not change for the better. They would undertake a day-long fast if an amicable solution was not reached after Friday and if no agreement was arrived at even after the fast, operators all over the State would stop transmission on April 14.

The State-wide protest, operators hoped, would bring the broadcasters to their senses as it would result in a huge loss of advertisement revenue. The broadcasters control the MSOs and it was precisely this reason that emboldened them, they said.

"We have already been affected due to war of words between the MSOs and broadcasters", they said and feared this would subsequently result in a clash between them and subscribers. "If the broadcasters have a problem of dues from the MSOs, they have to sort it out among themselves. They have no right to deprive the subscribers the pleasure of watching their favourite channels", many of them remarked. They also refused to buy the argument of MSOs that they were not being paid by the operators.

Briefing reporters after the meeting, Peter John, M.R. Srinivasan and Kishore Kumar, members of the newly formed committee, said the broadcasters should first stop their "war of words through advertisements" and on their television channels as it left the subscribers confused. They appealed to two groups to give up their adamant stance in the interest of subscribers and operators.

The prime concern of most of the operators seemed to be the method to be adopted to deal with the problem of new operators beginning to provide new connections to subscribers in areas controlled by them. Operators also went to the offices of the SCV in Kodambakkam and Hathway at Mylapore and submitted their grievances there. They appealed to the staff to refrain from providing signals to new players in areas that were controlled by existing operators.

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