Tuesday, January 10, 2006

No to a culture of freebies

My column on the ongoing cricket broadcast sharing issue is up on Cricinfo.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

The article is based on the premise that official snatch of private property for public consumption is wrong. This applies to the govt guidelines only to the extent that it tries to apply retroactively where the broadcast contracts are already finalised. For series where this has not been finalised, you cannot call those feeds as private property or stealing of pp. I definitely agree with the govt's view that the matches should be available to the length and breadth of the country's populace - just because my village doesnt have a cable operator shouldnt be a reason for me to be deprived of the opportunity of watching India.

Rahul Bhatia said...

I don't see what the problem is. Since Ten Sports bought these rights, they should be able to use them as they want. The rights belong to the Pakistan board. If they sold the rights to Ten Sports, why does the Indian government want to get involved? Why should it be made free just because it's a national passion?

Anonymous said...

If your reply was to my comment (the first one), I agree that for teh current series the rights have already been sold and as such the Indian gov is on thin ice in issuing the 'with retro effect' clause. My comment was for serieses where broadcast rights havent been fianlised.

Rahul Bhatia said...

Apologies, I should have said this the first time around. I don't think the government should be telling the BCCI or channels to share their feed with Doordarshan from here on. They're meddling in an arrangement between two private bodies. When two people conduct an exchange that they both find beneficial (and also does not violate anybody's rights) why should the anybody get in their way?

The argument that people are being deprived can be applied to n number of things, and if you do apply it and insist on all of India having that thing, you're pretty much asking for trouble.

Anonymous said...

Profit without social responsibility doesnot apply to even the hardest of commercial entities. This then is the BCCI - whose mandate should be to ensure the success of cricket in India (as the name itself suggests) - I dont think that they can dispute the far greater reach DD enjoys over other networks - or that it is the govt's channel. If you put those two facts together - I think Mr Dasmunshi is very much justified in asking for this arrangement for all future series.