In a move timed to capitalise on the football fever on the eve of the World Cup, Discovery Channel has announced a series of documentaries about the game.

The varied football programming, which MD Deepak Shourie claims is an outcome of the channel‘s focus on shows that are entertaining, educative and relevant to all viewer groups includes the history of the game, behind the scenes accounts and the business of the game.

The History of Football, a series that started on 4 April covers the multi dimensional cultural, social and political aspects of the game every Thursday at 10 pm takes viewers on a journey through the origins of the game, and what football means to different cultures.

Planet Soccer, a show that airs on 31 May and 23 June at 8 pm will be hosted by Ian Wright and deals with the football fever currently sweeping Korea and Japan.

Football Dreams on 31 May at 9 pm puts a marketing spin on the game from the Asian perspective. It deals with the region‘s soccer players as well as their agents and managers.

Ultimate Goal on 23 June at 7 pm will discover the blood and sweat involved in making the 2002 World Cup a reality. The show will feature the man responsible for the incredible floating pitch in Japan?s Sapporo stadium. The show also looks at the manner in which the Osaka police are being coached in martial arts to cope with rowdy overseas fans.

Ten Sports had announced earlier this week that it has the exclusive telecast rights of the FIFA World Cup and that state-owned broadcaster DD will be not be able to telecast the footer matches live terrestrially - a position that DD was taking stock of then.

Apparently, some progress has been made since then. The duo is believed to be negotiating the fee that Ten Sports will have to pay DD to telecast the World Cup on a deferred basis. The negotiations also involve the marketing of the World Cup telecast on DD by Ten Sports.

A senior Prasar Bharati official stated that the pubcaster was considering whether Ten Sports should be "charged prime time telecast fee or the normal telecast fee for the time band when the soccer matches are telecast."

Keeping the time difference in mind, the soccer matches will, by and large, get to be telecast on DD around midnight, which way past prime time in India. DD‘s prime time telecast fee is Rs 350,000 per 30 minutes with 120 seconds free commercial time (FCT), while non-prime time fees, specially those after 11 pm, come at a cheaper price at about Rs 50,000 per 30 minutes with 150 seconds of FCT.

The Prasar Bharati official also pointed out that DD has no other option but to telecast the soccer matches on a deferred basis as Ten Sports has claimed it has exclusive telecast rights for the India region.

"If Ten Sports is willing to market the matches to be telecast on DD along with the live telecast it will have, we have no problems as long as the revenue sharing is adequately okay," the official pointed out.

Ten Sports, which had won the global telecast rights for FIFA World Cup, had asked DD to provide only deferred transmission on its terrestrial network. Ten Sports had written to Prasar Bharati asking it not to air the Cup matches on the terrestrial network at the same time that Ten Sports airs the matches. They have also communicated that airing realtime is not possible as Ten Sports has the exclusive rights to air the matches for the India region.

There‘s been a lot of yo-yoeing on whether the Indian government would today consider modifying the Cable TV Networks (Regulation) Act 1995 to accomodate compulsory migration by cable TV operators towards conditional access systems (CAS).

The buzz this morning was that the much-talked-about cabinet meeting will be discussing matters of the nation rather than matters related to cable TV.

Said a Delhi-based cable TV source in a telecon: "The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) which meets every Tuesday was to decide on CAS today. But because the Union Cabinet is meeting on other issues, a decision on CAS will not be possible today. The CCEA next meets on Tuesday and that‘s when we can expect a decision. It‘s quite possible the amendments may be pushed to the next session of Parliament unless someone with guts pursues CAS."

Apparently, that somebody is information & broadcasting minister Sushma Swaraj. According to sources, she has been insisting that the Union cabinet which is currently meeting should discuss the issue of CAS. "She has made CAS her personal agenda," says another ministry source. "That‘s why she wants the amendments recommended by Rakesh Mohan to his earlier report to be incorporated in the Cable TV Act at the earliest. She will not tolerate a postponement."

The government plans to introduce the amendments to the Act in this session of Parliament once the cabinet gives its stamp of approval. CAS is expected to ensure uniform pricing of cable TV subscriptions throughout the country, while allowing cable TV consumers to pay only for the channels they watch.

A lead time of around six months is likely to be given to cable TV service providers from the date of notification for the installation of the addressability system. The four metros of Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai will be covered in the first phase of implementation of CAS, according to a report in The Economic Times.