Chennai, Sept 03: Day one of the Conditional Access System (CAS) experiment here was marked by confusion, chaos and thousands of disappointed viewers, who were deprived of their favourite shows and forced to see some obscure Chinese channels instead. This capital city of Tamil Nadu on Monday became the first city in the country to implement the much-debated CAS. And it seems the sceptics were right. Pay channels went off the air at midnight and viewers in the city woke up to Chinese TV instead, illegally downloaded by individual cable television operators. People waited in vain for operators to keep their promise and provide the set-top boxes (STBs) that are supposed to route the channels. At the end of the day, only about 2,000 households had STBs in a city with a subscriber base of one million, multi-channel operators said. It's not as if there had been no groundwork. Surveys had been going on for three months; data had been collected on how many people want STBs; on whether they wanted to hire or buy the STBs; Government and other networks had conducted awareness campaigns for the last six months. But it all appeared to be in vain. The anger was palpable.
"Why is Chennai being experimented upon and made a scapegoat?" asked M B Nirmal, founder of Exnora International, a city NGO. He has urged Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa not to allow Chennai to become the testing ground for federal schemes. As of now, the situation is this: Tamil channels like Sun TV network, Jaya TV and Raj TV networks are all free channels and are available. STAR, Zee and Sony networks as well as ESPN, Ten Sports and DD Sports channels are off the air. All movie channels, including HBO and Star Movies, as well as educational channels like Discovery and National Geographic are also off the air. Tamil Nadu has just two multi-services operators (MSOs), Hathway and Sumangali Cable Vision. Hathway is offering an STB for Rs 3,000. Sumangali has priced STBs at about Rs 4,400 and a rental scheme of Rs 500 with deposit. The operators said requests for STBs were far fewer than expected. "People have preferred to rent, rather than purchase, the new and so-far untested technology," said P S Lakshmanan of Hathway. Late on Monday evening, Hathway came up with pay channel bouquets for between Rs 85 and Rs 109, with discounts between 12 and 51 per cent. Hathway full house is for Rs 109.
Bouquet rates made available by the channels are different, adding to consumer confusion. STAR at Rs. 50, Sony at Rs. 55, Zee at Rs. 55, ESPN and STAR Sport at Rs 32 and Ten Sport at Rs 14. No one understands the logic or why different cities will have different rates. What they do know is that television watching has become an intricate quagmire. "The only thing clear is that we will have to pay about Rs 100 as fee to the cable operators," said one disgruntled viewer.
While viewers wait for the clouds of confusion to clear, the Tamil Nadu Cable TV Owners Association has sent a letter to Ms Jayalalithaa asking her to reduce the Sales Tax of 21 per cent on STBs. If that is done, an STB will cost a mere Rs 600, the association said. "Everything is in the hands of the Chief Minister. If she wants, it (CAS) can be implemented. If she says no, it cannot be enforced in the city," association president Kayal Illavarasu told reporters.
The association also sent a telegram to the Information and Broadcasting Ministry Tuesday, explaining the confusion CAS had cause