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Peter Mukerjea is in the CBI office, being investigated for his role in the disappearance and murder of his step daughter/sister-in-law who was his son’s fiancé. The twists and turns of this ongoing saga bear such uncanny resemblance to the chartbusting programmes on Star TV he once headed. Yet, it is so far removed for many of us beat reporters who were covering broadcast media when we first spotted him in Shastri Bhavan. God, this guy would have been more comfortable in the confines of 5-Star comfort, we thought.
Peter must have shared the feeling. “What am I doing here,” he appeared to be asking no one in particular. This Bhavan among other offices, houses the all-powerful Information and Broadcasting Ministry on its fifth and sixth floors, and defines middle-class morals by prescribing permissible content fit to air. From entertainment programmes to news, the officials in the Ministry watch out for transgressions and penalise broadcasters with showcause notices.
And 2000 onwards, Star TV ruled the airwaves and Peter was king. Having tasted popularity with some extremely regressive serials that threatened to put the clock back by a century for its excessive obsession with mothers-in-law, daughters-in-law, and convoluted story lines, Peter and success walked together as his fellowmen at Star gushed about his near-magical powers of turning everything into commercial success.
“Peter is a genius and a wonderful boss,” was a constant hum as we watched the making of a myth. The Vajpayee government was in power and the year was 2002 when the Ministry resembled a battleground for contesting claims made by cable operators and broadcasters over money that could be shared with the government if only the media business could be transparent. The cable industry that had mushroomed in the wake of the US-Iraq war in 1991 had become a huge unregulated cottage industry run over by property dealers who doubled up as cable operators and settled their differences with a gun. The scene was screaming for some regulation.
As far as Ministry officials were concerned, cable operators were goons out to cheat the broadcasters and the government of their rightful share of revenues by not declaring the total number of subscribers they were actually catering to. Peter Mukherjea, with his clipped Brit-accent, appeared a better bet for the ministry officials which had some highly respectable bureaucrats who could connect with him. One of them even remarked, “I trust Peter. At the very least, I can have a decent conversation with him over drinks. Those cable operators…” For reporters, this was a fascinating battle to chronicle where a window seat was absolutely crucial. Even as cable operators wooed us reporters with pizzas and coke in the committee room where important meetings were held through the day running late into night, it was clear to all of us that the bureaucracy’s heart was with broadcasters. The cable operators thought Peter was the ringleader of chor s (thieves) smug on the high viewership his programmes garnered.
At stake was the huge subscription money that no one actually had a fix on. With over 85 million homes being claimed to have got cable connection, the figures were being under-reported by cable operators, said the Ministry and broadcasters in unison. The advertisement revenues were in the region of Rs. 1,400 crore. Star ’s revenues were around Rs. 900 crore. Zee TV , which was the undisputed king of soaps till Star took over the ratings game, had its own cable for distribution. Star was the proverbial outsider that had tied up with Hathway cable. And Star was cribbing about money lost in distribution. It could earn more if the cable operators were honest, or so the argument went. We were privy to the happenings in the two camps, such was our impeccable integrity as we got abused roundly by both for the reports we filed, which we took as sign of objectivity.
The cable operators were last mile men and a woman connecting channels to television sets, via ugly dishes perched on their homes, collected the subscription money. And they were expected to deposit them with broadcasters. But what was happening was this: If an operator had 200 homes he provided cable connections for, he would declare 50! So, the solution was to have set-top boxes or Conditional Access System (CAS) installed in cable homes. But this, the cable operators argued, called for huge investments in the boxes which had to be imported from Israel. Watching television was going to become a very expensive exercise, someone whispered; the cost for importing these boxes would set subscription bills soaring through the roof for the subscriber. The arguments went back and forth.
And yet, operators wanted these installed and broadcasters like Star did not seem too keen as they had set their sights on the more evolved addressable system called Direct To Home (DTH), which held the promise of bypassing cable operators altogether. This was premium service. As the Vajpayee Government had banned transmission on Ku-Band (used for DTH), Peter and Co. were lobbying to remove the ban. It was clear to all of us that the first mover in the DTH business could run away with the cake and the bakery. Zee was not yet ready and required time. DTH was Murdoch’s baby in U.K. and he was keen to birth one in India, what with its burgeoning population, many of whom had the money to pay for entertainment.
The battle between Star and ZEE played out in the Ministry. The sophisticated London-returned Peter vs. the earthy Jawahar Goel, younger brother of Subhash Chandra Goel, the chairman of ZEE with roots in Haryana. Our attention was divided between the pizzas and the discussions that Peter was having inside the secretary’s room.
Conflict of interest was not something that had entered our minds then as we indulged in guilty pleasures, courtesy some multi-nationals. It was not as if Peter did not grant interviews. To watch the man in the arena was a different experience from a close encounter in a controlled environment.
When Peter and his cohorts walked in, it was like was watching a film where a ring leader is hemmed in by bouncers. So, here was the CEO, with his CFO, COO and some more important sounding titles from Star . A whisper of “Peter could be in Shastri Bhavan” was enough to send us into a tailspin, for it held the promise of sighting the heir to the Newscorp Empire run by Rupert Murdoch, James Murdoch. It was important for us to get more than sound bytes from these important men who not only ruled the airwaves but also the political fortunes in U.K. So we despatched the tallest amongst us to keep a watch on the elevators. There were two elevators on the sixth floor, which has the secretary’s office and the fifth floor where the Minister of State sat. Such was Peter’s importance that the elevator man, sensing the moment’s importance, kept the elevator waiting for the star.
Peter was with James Murdoch and we were waiting out. Eye contact with him was out of the question. Somehow we had to catch him as he made for the elevator. The tallest man kept watch. If he slipped past us, Oberoi Hotel was our next bet. The ring fenced with his officiously-titled men was difficult to break through. He had reached the elevator and the tall man was blocking his way with one foot in the doors. “I have a flight to catch,” Peter softly said. The tall man replied, “I too have a flight to catch.” That stalled Peter. We got into the elevator and my friend very politely began in a whisper, “May I ask a question?” It was addressed to James. Peter replied, “I am afraid not.”
The second time, we were waiting outside the PMO (Prime Minister’s Office) as the clash between broadcasters and cable operators had reached the doors of the highest office.
Now, waiting at the PMO is a pain as any reporter will tell you. At the height of summer, the wait can be excruciating as the heat. Ministry officials plied us with samosas to keep our energy levels high and suddenly we spotted Peter. An enterprising reporter friend shot off a desperate question in Bengali hoping Peter would take the bait. With James to his left and a senior Star official to his right, Peter looked right through the question pretending he didn’t understand a word of Bengali.
That was the last we saw of him. When he started NewsX with friends and the many acquaintances he had befriended in the last decade, his wife Indrani Mukerjea’s PR machinery sent mails to reporters asking whether we would be interested in interviewing her. Frankly, we had moved on and lost interest in Peter and Mrs. Peter.
And he reappeared just as suddenly as we spotted him that day in Shastri Bhavan. A murder, perhaps his wife wrote. And he had become the news. I put a call through at quarter to twelve at night, the day Indrani was arrested in August. Peter was polite on the phone.
Peter Mukerjea’s saga had only just begun and shows no sign of ending as personal emails and text messages are fodder for news. He is a man alone now.
