Doordarshan defends turning DD-Sports into a pay channel

Doordarshan defends turning DD-Sports into a pay channel
PRESS TRUST OF INDIA

NEW DELHI, SEP 18: Doordarshan, which has exclusive rights for telecast of Sydney Olympics, today strongly defended turning DD Sports into a pay channel and charged the cable operators of attempting to "armtwist" the National broadcaster on the issue.

"Sports content is very exclusive and it has to be supported by advertisement and subscriber revenue if DD has to continue to cover major sports events," Prasar Bharati Chief Executive Officer R R Shah said.

Dismissing charges of cable operators on the issue, he said it was wrong to suggest that DD was not doing enough to make the Olympics contents available to subscribers and was in fact providing an 43 hour telecast on the Sports Channel as also on DD-I and DD-II.

He said that while DD Sports was telecasting Olympics round the clock, the National Channel and Metro beam it 11 and eight hours respectively.

"Such content coverage of Olympics has never been done before," Shah claimed adding that newspaper reports criticising Doordarshan was based on "misinformation".

He alleged that some cable operators were attempting to raise a controversy on the issue which was aimed at "arm-twisting Doordarshan into accepting a lower price and lower viewership".