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Govt to initiate another round of talks on CAS
New Delhi, May 27: With the Conditional Access System (CAS) mired in controversy, government said today it will hold another round of discussions with all stakeholders to clear any apprehensions about the system.
New Delhi, May 27: With the Conditional Access System (CAS) mired in controversy, government said today it will hold another round of discussions with all stakeholders to
clear any apprehensions about the system.
"What is happening today is dislocation....A lot of things are being said about CAS without the system being understood. What we need to do is call another meeting of all stakeholders of CAS - cable operators, broadcasters, consumer groups etc and clarify matters," information and broadcasting secretary Pawan Chopra told a news agency here.
Asked whether the rollout of CAS will be on schedule on July 14, Chopra declined to comment. He also did not specify if CAS would be implemented in a single metro to begin with. Chopra said consumers stand to gain from CAS, since they will get far greater number of free-to-air channels under the CAS regime than are being received at present.
"With CAS, consumers will be in effect paying Rs 72 for a whole host of channels.....I believe a number of pay channels will go FTA. Majority of a channel's revenue is from advertising and not subscription based.....Consumers have nothing to fear," the I&B secretary said.
He said the mass media market was becoming oligopolistic with some very large corporations controlling the market. "How far should this trend go? We need to examine this issue". The I&B secretary said within India, the relevance of having AIR and Doordarshan is being questioned. These institutions were set up so as to be free from both political and commercial pressures but "this is increasingly not the case".
Bureau Report
Asked whether the rollout of CAS will be on schedule on July 14, Chopra declined to comment. He also did not specify if CAS would be implemented in a single metro to begin with. Chopra said consumers stand to gain from CAS, since they will get far greater number of free-to-air channels under the CAS regime than are being received at present.
"With CAS, consumers will be in effect paying Rs 72 for a whole host of channels.....I believe a number of pay channels will go FTA. Majority of a channel's revenue is from advertising and not subscription based.....Consumers have nothing to fear," the I&B secretary said.
He said the mass media market was becoming oligopolistic with some very large corporations controlling the market. "How far should this trend go? We need to examine this issue". The I&B secretary said within India, the relevance of having AIR and Doordarshan is being questioned. These institutions were set up so as to be free from both political and commercial pressures but "this is increasingly not the case".
Bureau Report