Notice to Nimbus over live cricket feed to DD

New Delhi, Feb 14: Nimbus Communications, the BCCI's telecast rights holder, was today served a notice by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting for violating an ordinance making it mandatory for private broadcasters to share live feeds of important sports events with public broadcaster Prasar Bharati.

Violation of the ordinance can invite a fine of up to Rs one crore and or even a ban on the channel.

The Joint Secerteray in the Ministry, Baijendra Kumar, told UNI that the channel has been given time till tomorrow to reply.

The notice has been served for delaying feeds of India-Sri Lanka Kolkata one day international to Doordarshan last week when the ordinance had come into force.

Nimbus had also given delayed feeds of Sunday's Rajkot ODI too.

The action against Nimbus comes two days after the Delhi High Court refused to stay the operation of the ordinance which had been challenged by the private broadcaster.

Nimbus had delayed feeds of the Kolkata match against provisions of the ordinance on the ground that the matter was subjudice and it was only following the last month's interim High Court order allowing the Prasar Bharati to download feeds with seven minutes delay.

The Prasar Bharati had warned it that its act of delaying the feed was illegal as the ordinance had come into force before the start of the Kolkata match.

Meanwhile, Nimbus had on the same day challenged the ordinance, pleading for its stay, a plea rejected by the court on February 12.

The matter had reached the court after Nimbus refused to share live feeds of the India-West Indies series with Prasar Bharati, but was directed by the government to do so in accordance with downlinking guidelines of 2005.

These guidelines make it compulsory for sports telecast rights holding channels to share the live feed of important sporting events with Doordarshan and AIR by entering into a commercial agreement.

The terms provide for revenue sharing of 75:25 in favour of the rights holders.

Just a day before the cricket series was to begin on January 21, the talks between Prasar Bharati and Nimbus Sports on sharing live feeds broke down.

The offer of Nimbus Sports to give the feed to the Prasar Bharati with 15 minutes delay was not acceptable to the public broadcaster.

Nimbus also did not agree to DD showing the matches on its DTH platform DD Direct Plus.

It had also said that if it shared the feed, the signals would have to be encrypted so that they reach houses only on the terrestrial network and not to those who get DD signals through cable TV.

All these conditions were not acceptabel to Doordarshan.

However, DD had to accept delayed feeds of the remaining matches of the India-West Indies series after Delhi High Court interim order.

Not satisfied with the order, Prasar Bharati had challenged it in the court and had also in the meantime brought in the ordinance.

UNI