So many channels, yet so few to watch

New Delhi: Soon households in north India will have a plethora of south Indian television channels to choose from and vice versa.

This is mostly to do with the fact that for a cable operator, the ability to offer more than 50 channels justifies a subscription rate of Rs 200 and above. It is also to do with reasons like greater excess capacities available with cable operators.

Broadcasters no longer face pressures of getting space on networks because, an industry expert says, the cable scenario has changed and the pressure earlier faced by broadcasters has eased.

Much of this is largely due to the economic slowdown and the consequent reduction in advertising revenues, leading to several channels winding up operations or going low on distribution, thus leading to excess capacities, says the expert.

Cable networks have also upgraded their technologies with broadband networks around the corner, and prospects of being able to offer a variety of value-added services about to become a reality, most of them are able to offer upwards of 50 channels at a time.

But, for a cable TV subscriber in Chandigarh, an offering of a number of Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and Kannada channels means zero value-addition. Ditto for a Chennai subscriber who may be getting a plethora of Punjabi and Bengali channels. In the event, the cable guy is really not bothered whether the viewer actually watches so many channels or not, says an official from a broadcasting company.

Cable operators say conditional access is the only solution to the problem. As long as there is no conditional access system, households will get several channels - some of which they want and others they do not want, says a Delhi-based cable operator.

Another cable operator says offering conditional access involves an upheaval in the entire system as it means installing set-top boxes on existing television sets. All of this ultimately boils down to a substantial additional investment for subscribers and much lowered revenues for cable operators.

Maybe Delhi Punjabis should learn to enjoy Tamil programmes - and vice versa.