The regional channel war has heated up as more and more players are taking a leap into the wave. India‘s national broadcaster is not far behind. Doordarshan has seriously decided to tackle private players who are banking on quality and agressive marketing. It is adapting an agressive marketing strategy. DD already has ‘Sahyadri‘, its 24-hour Marathi channel and is set to launch a 24-hour Gujarati channel on
1 May. DD Kannada will be renamed as ‘DD Chandan‘. A bouquet of regional channels wil be unveiled for Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Bihar in the coming months.

DD has also decided to take the convergence wave seriously. It is looking to partner with the Ron Victor promoted Homeland Networks which hosts the sites - www.tvofindia.com, www.radioofindia.com and www.pressofindia.com. It is also in talks with Pentafour Software which hosts a broadband portal NumTV.com.

The national broadcaster Doordarshan denied the press release sent out by the ex-Star TV owner Richard Li‘s Internet group Pacific CyberWorks. The release stated that Pacific CyberWorks will build, maintain and operate Doordarshan‘s Internet site dedicated to Indian cricket. Pacific Century CyberWork‘s statements about it bagging the Internet media rights for international cricket matches played in India through the year 2004 has been questioned by DD.
Doordarshan had earlier announced that it will give away Internet rights for international matches played in India to anyone paying an annual charge of Rs 2.5 million. But, no contracts have been signed on as yet and thus Pacific Century CyberWork‘s claims seem to be incorrect.

Senior DD officials were quoted in a local newspaper saying that if TransWorld International, who own the marketing rights for four years, have given away Internet multimedia rights to any one, it was without the knowledge of Doordarshan and that the company desiring to acquire them should obtain it first from the national broadcaster.

The rechristening has been done to create an identity for the channel which faces competition from Zee‘s Alpha Marathi, Prabhat, Tara (the forthcoming channel from Broadcast Worldwide) and another one from the southern powerhouse Eenadu.

Recently Doordarshan had announced its willingness to part its regional channels to private players and the national broadcaster is hoping this renaming step to add value to the channel.

A residents‘ association in Mumbai is fighting against the irregular price structure of the cablewallahs. All the residents of a particular area in Mumbai have joined hands to form an association which is refusing to pay exorbitant charges to the cable ops. The local cable operator had hiked cable charges from Rs 80 per month to Rs 125 per month. The association has been demanding an universal pricing structure.
Similar incidents have been reported all over the country where the customer is hassled by the harsh and unfair pricing structure of cable ops. This indicates the growing discontent among the customers who are often held at gunpoint by cable ops who suddenly switch off channels when they deem fit. Complaints have been flowing in from various directions. Cable operators show advertisements on their local cable channel which occupies more than half of the screen and often movies and programmes are stretched to never ending duration which irritates viewers. During cricket matches and other live events, some cable ops insert scrolling advertisements which violate copyright regulations.

Another disturbing practice of the cable operators is under disclosure of c&s homes (cable & satellite). The ratio of disclosure is around thirty percent. This results in heavy losses for satellite channels who tend to hike the subscription rates.

The cable operators and the general customers should be prepared for higher rates as the forthcoming era would be of paid channels. Since the satellite channels offer high quality programmes and due to increasing costs, the subscription rates will always tend to be high.

Discovery Communications‘ Managing Director Kiran Karnik, said at a recent conference, "The people should now prepare themselves for higher cable rates if they are want quality programming. The days of free-to-air channels will soon be over. The market should now mature."