B4U Networks has terminated its distribution deal with Modi Entertainment Network (MEN) blaming it for what it says is the surreptitious manner in which the channel distributor reached an agreement with French channel Fashion TV deal to the exclusion of the former.

According to network distribution head Debashish Dey, B4U‘s contract with Fashion TV runs till 2005 and the deal signed between FTV and MEN on 9 August was illegal. B4U has served a legal notice on FTV for breach of trust, says Dey. Queried as to what was the status of music channel MCM in the imbroglio, Dey could provide no details.

Henceforth, both B4U Entertainment (soon to be B4U movies) and B4U Music would be handled by the network itself, Dey said.

Dey alluded to MEN‘s earlier loss of distribution and marketing rights for sports channel ESPN and the recent loss of its deal to monitor distribution of national broadcaster Doordarshan‘s Metro channel while stating that FTV would regret breaking its ties with B4U.

Officials from MEN were unavailable for comment on the issue.

Sports in India means cricket, cricket, and only cricket. To the world at large however there is far more to sport and that is what ESPN is attempting to bring to the notice of the Indian viewer. Come 18 August, ESPN kicks off an ambitious programming initiative built around the world‘s most popular sport - soccer.

The centrepiece of the thrust is the pan-Asia telecast rights ESPN Star Sports has acquired for the English Premier League (EPL). And in keeping with the current thinking among television strategists, appointment viewing is what ESPN hopes to garner in this no-expenses spared soccer-centric programme push.

Speaking at a press briefing in south Mumbai yesterday, Manu Sawhney, managing director, ESPN India, outlined four thrust areas which would be utilised to push the property in India. Multimedia - print, television and online activities; contests, live screenings in clubs, and school campaigns. Sawhney said the various promotional activities would be rolled out over the coming two months and expressed confidence that there was a market just waiting to be tapped on the soccer viewing front. He identified the big cities and the states of Kerala, Goa and West Bengal as primary focus areas.

Pepsi, Samsung, Madura Garments were the three principal advertisers for EPL and had signed one-year deals, Sawhney said. Questioned on whether the soccer initiative was a joint one with Star Sports, he said this was essentially ESPN‘s baby.

On the programming front ESPN is set to showcase three live games a week on prime time - one on Saturday and two on Sundays. The network also will telecast one additional game every Saturday (deferred relay), one additional Manchester United game and football-related magazine-style programmes, through the week .

And the backend efforts that go into getting a real "close-up and personal" fell of the goings-on on the pitch is quite amazing, going by the information put out by ESPN (no costing figures though). A total of 130 crew on-ground and at studio are involved. A fleet of ten trucks and support vehicles, with standby power generators. Twenty-five cameras are used for each game with that number going up to 35 for a finals fixture. For the audio 20 directional microphones are deployed.

Queried on what other properties ESPN was focussing on other than cricket and now soccer, an ESPN official said Formula One car racing, sports news and quiz-based shows had a lot of potential for development. Actions

One of the recurring themes in the just-concluded Enter Media 2001 conference organised by the Confederation of Indian Industries (CII) in Mumbai was the issue of piracy.

That the problem is a pan-Asian one was elucidated by Zee Networks group broadcasting CEO Sandeep Goyal, who referred to the easy availability of the latest Indian films on cable even in a developed market like Japan.

At a regional level, the Cable & Satellite Broadcasting Association of Asia (Casbaa) has taken up the issue of intellectual property rights (IPR) protection in Thailand to domestic regulators the public relations department of the Prime Minister‘s Office (PRO) and the Mass Communications Organisation of Thailand (MCOT).

Senior Casbaa officials met with the directors-general of the PRD and MCOT at the conclusion of a Casbaa Roundtable on Pay TV Piracy in Asia on 3 August in Bangkok and requested that the PRD and MCOT play a more active role in combating pay TV piracy in the Thai market.

Both MCOT and the PRD, as well as the Royal Thai Police, expressed a clear willingness to tackle the problem during the roundtable.

"We believe there may be as many as 150,000 pay TV households in Thailand that are not paying the rights owners for the channels they are viewing. Of course, this also damages the viability of the legitimate operators," said Simon Twiston Davies, the executive director of Casbaa."

According to Twiston Davies, one remedy on the pay TV front could be as simple as adding a clause to annual licensing conditions insisting that local cable operators provide proof that they hold legally binding contracts to distribute individual channels. If a cable operator were unable to demonstrate a contractual relationship with rights owners, it would not have its license renewed.

Twiston Davies noted that creative industries in markets as diverse as Hong Kong and India have been almost devastated by IPR piracy in recent years and Thailand could also be under threat. He added that Thailand remains on the US Trade Representative‘s 301 Watch List for piracy activities and that upcoming World Trade Organisation negotiations are expected to increasingly focus on IPR matters.

The Casbaa Roundtable on Pay-TV Piracy covered case studies from regional pay-TV operators, technology specialists and rights holders who outlined their views on the scale of the problem in Asia and potential action points.

Among those exchanging views during the day-long roundtable were representatives from AOL Time Warner, Star Group, Discovery Channel, Turner Broadcasting, Hong Kong Cable, UBC, Astro, Irdeto Access, NDS and the Motion Picture Association.

In recent months pay-TV piracy has been forced up the Casbaa agenda as the problem has escalated in the jurisdictions of Hong Kong, the Philippines, Taiwan and Thailand.

In the coming months Casbaa will be taking its concerns on these issues to governments at several levels as well as, on occasion, representing the interests of the industry in legal actions.