SABe TV‘s celebrated variety entertainment show Office-Office has won the RAPA (Radio and TV Advertising Practitioners‘ Association of India) Award for "Best Comedy" serial for the year 2001-2002, the second year in a row it is winning it.

On its 27th annual award ceremony the RAPA Awards 2001 declared Office-Office as the best comedy serial. Directed by Rajeev Mehra with Pankaj Kapoor in the lead role, Office-Office is a comedy on the travails of the common man under the bureaucratic system that prevails in India.

Office-Office airs twice a week, Mondays and Tuesdays at 8:00 PM

"We are on track to achieve our aim of becoming the number one network as far as subscription revenues are concerned."

This is what Shantonu Aditya, SET?s executive VP-distribution, asserted when asked to the comment on the cable industry‘s response to the new subscriber regime of Rs 40 per month for the six-channel Sony bouquet (including Discovery and Animal Planet) which became effective 1 April. "Our all-India declared connectivity is currently at 4.5 million and we expect to reach 6 million paid subs by the end of the year," Aditya said. Prior to the price increase Sony was at 3.5 million paid subs, Aditya said.

"Except for the problems we had with Hathway (the Rajan Raheja promoted MSO in which Star has a stake), overall it has been pretty smooth sailing as regards getting acceptance for the new rates we have instituted effective 1 April," Aditya said.

The dispute with Hathway had resulted in Sony switching off its feed to the MSO resulting in the bouquet going off the air in large pockets in Mumbai for over a week. Sony switched on its feed late last Saturday after an agreement was thrashed out. While Aditya was not forthcoming as to the terms of the deal that had been signed with Hathway, industry sources say a declared connectivity of 30,000 is what has been agreed to. This is valid till June and post-June there will be a scaling up of the subscriber numbers.

Almost all the major MSOs across the country have signed on, Aditya said, pointing out this was achieved without the protracted attrition that had often been witnessed by other bouquets following rate hikes. Aditya attributed a large part of this to the "six quality channels on the bouquet whose value is derived independent of each other."

To telecast or not to telecast (World cup soccer matches) is the question that is haunting Prasar Bharati and it is still attempting to salvage an almost a dead deal.

"Talks are still on with Ten Sports for telecast of the World Cup matches," a senior official of Prasar Bharati told indiantelevision.com on Tuesday, pointing out that the national broadcaster is faced with a strange dilemma of trying to balance economics and its role as a public service broadcaster.

"We are trying to see whether we can do something with the opening match and then the semi-final and final games of the soccer World Cup," the official said, adding that taking all the matches on a six-hour delayed telecast basis would not be prudent.

Since the soccer matches, if telecast on DD, would be under the sponsored category, Ten Sports would have to pay a certain amount of telecast fee to Prasar Bharati and, in return, will get a certain amount of free-commercial time for hawking on every 30-minute basis.

Admitting that Doordarshan is under "severe pressure from viewers and policy-makers alike," the official said: "We are sitting on the horns of dilemma. If we decide to telecast the soccer matches then it would have to be on a delayed basis of at least six hours. If we go ahead and do it, then viewers will not get anything extra as in six hours time results of matches would have already been known in this age of information superhighway, even if the matches have not already been seen on Ten Sports."

The official further pointed out that if DD decides to give the soccer World Cup a complete go-by since Ten Sports has the exclusive telecast rights for the Indian region, it was sure to attract lot of flak from politicians and the public.

DD also does not see much revenue flowing in from the delayed telecast of the soccer matches.

Prasar Bharati, overseeing the functioning of Doordarshan and All India Radio and one of the biggest broadcasters in the world, is smarting under the fact that it cannot telecast live the World Cup matches as Ten Sports has with it exclusive satellite and terrestrial rights and had written to DD earlier that the pubcaster would not be permitted to air the soccer games live.