> Match live on DD

Crickets Fans rejoice because now you dont have to watch 7minute delayed match because the fourth and final one-day international between India and Sri Lanka, at Visakhapatnam, on Saturday,17th, will be telecast live on Doordarshan following a Delhi high court directive to Nimbus Communication to provide live feed...

A division bench comprising Justice Vikramjit Sen and Justice J.P. Singh issued the direction to Nimbus, which owns Neo Sports, when it approached the court in response to the public broadcaster Prasar Bharati's notice seeking live and clean feed of the Feb 17 Vishakhapatnam cricket match for Doordarshan.

Issued under the provision of recently promulgated Sports Broadcasting (mandatory sharing with Prasar Bharati) Ordinance, 2007, the notice threatened Nimbus to cancel its licence under the provisions of the ordinance if the NEO Sports owner failed in live-feeding Doordarshan.

Nimbus offered to provide live feed of the match to Prasar Bharti with a rider that the Centre will not take any action or decision as per the show cause notice, which states that their license will be suspended if they do not provide live feed of the match or or fine upto Rs one crore.

After the Centre gave an undertaking that it will not take any action, the court directed the government not to take any decision or action till March 9, the next date of hearing.

The court also issued notices to the Centre and Prasar Bharati on a petition filed by Nimbus challenging the ordinance, which makes it mandatory for private broadcasters to share live feed with Prasar Bharati.

Earlier in the day, Nimbus had approached the court seeking protection from the Centre's alleged threat to cancel its license if it did not respond to the government's show cause notice by Thursday.

The Delhi high court had earlier cleared the decks for the telecast of the India-West Indies cricket series on Doordarshan, allowing it to show the matches seven minutes after the live telecast on Neo Sports, which has the exclusive telecast rights for cricket matches being played in India till March 2010.

However, the court allowed All India Radio to broadcast the matches live.

This interim arrangement was put in place by Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul while hearing a petition by Nimbus Communications Ltd., which owns Neo Sports, challenging the Information and Broadcasting Ministry's uplinking guidelines.

The January 19 guidelines asked Neo Sports to share the live feed of the series with Doordarshan and AIR.

Under the interim arrangement, Neo Sports had to provide the feed seven minutes late and without commercials.

finally some hard man tactics has brought good sense on nimbus

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Safin's Signature:

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world;
the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself.
Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
- George Bernard Shaw

But really this speaks bad of govt so far as its policies are concerned from industries' point of view. Not only in cricket but this just gave indications that if any company, foreign investments included, does anything bad for its vote bank, the govt will simply issue a ordinance. Sad thing i would say for corporate india.

Thank God someone shares my view.

the Govt is doing what Indira did in the 70s.... Well, not exactly, but kinda similar.

Ok, maybe not similar, but it just reminds me of what Indira did ..... just throwing out the foreign companies...

I dont get it at all.....

If the govt is so keen to show the matches on DD, let them pay big bucks....

Or, they should compensate Nimbus BIG Time for the live feed...

Using high handed tactics like this (passing an ordinance, high court interfering) is just idiotic.

Gud News

It is bad for other reasons - the government is claiming that THEY own telecast rights - which is a terrible idea. They are trying to claim ownership to everything - moving bad to socialism is a bad idea.

But in a way its Very Gud ...... dere r millions of Homes in India who dont hav a cable connection ....... now y shud they be deprived of watchin a gud cricket match just becoz it is not profitable to some private firm ? I m talkin only Cricket here ..... imo wat Government has done is absolutely right !!

The question is why is cricket considered such a big deal? And how can one claim a right to entertainment? If that is so I demand free porn. Public demand cannot be the basis for ownership or lack thereof. Neither can this be called "public good". The fact is if they had left Nimbus alone, with the advent of CAS and DTH it would have been forced to improve its act - people wouldn't subscribe and the advertisers would back off.
And what is all this ordinance crap? And ordinance should only be issued for urgent issues that cannot wait till Parliament is brought to session. This cannot be called urgent ( if people miss some cricket, the world will not end. Urgency is measure here in terms of how critical it is to bring out the ordinance). But the UPA seems to have specialized in ordinance raj. The executive is attempting to assume the function of the legislature, and in some cases is trying to usurp the judiciary and the constitution. There are legal issues in this case that you cannot imagine. If this thing goes through, it sets a precedence for executive fiat being able to negate ANY sort of property rights for ANY purpose. You don't want that to happen. Not with the SPM>CPM>PM arrangement we have at this time.