Anniversaries or Instalment nightmares ?

NTV and its devotional channel Bhakti are going to celebrate the completion of one year on 30th of this month. Mr. Chowdary is now ready with his third channel Vanitha. For want of auspicious days, the launch of vanitha is slated for 9th September. The anniversary celebrations of the existing channels will also take place on 9th. But this is not a cheerful moment for Mr. Chowdary since he has to pay huge amount towards Carriage fees to the cable operators. Apart from paying for Vanitha, he has to pay another instalment of around 4 crores for the earlier channels also. The amount he paid last year was meant only for one year and the operators are demanding fresh payment.

Last year Mr. Chowdary estimated that his channel would be popular among the audience in one year and that the people would demand their operators to show NTV. Basing on this assumption, he thought that he would not be required to request the operators. But the things are entirely different. The channel dropped from 3rd to 4th position among the 5 News Channels. Under these circumstances, Mr. Chowdary is forced to urge the operators to show his channel. He is now prepared to forego an amount of 7 crores for NTV, Bhakti and Vanitha this year.... The anniversary gift to the Cable operators.

The situation at TV5 is no different. Though Mr. Naidu is happy with the performance of the channel scaling to 3 rd position surpassing its nearest rival NTV, he is under pressure from the operators as he is also completing 1 year on 2nd October. With about 5 more news channels coming up and are ready to pay carriage fees, the operators are asking for an additional amount this year. They are even threatening to stop the channel and allocate the space to the new channels willing to pay huge carriage fees. Its no wonder if the cable Operators openly call for an auction and see that they carriage fees of more than 5 crores in the near future.

It is also learnt that the operators are unhappy with TV5 for its inclusion in Tata Sky which is against the interests of the cable operators. Though TV5 boasts itself for finding place in DTH, which its rival NTV is deprived of, it has become a negative point from the operators point of view