To telecast or not to telecast (World cup soccer matches) is the question that is haunting Prasar Bharati and it is still attempting to salvage an almost a dead deal.

"Talks are still on with Ten Sports for telecast of the World Cup matches," a senior official of Prasar Bharati told indiantelevision.com on Tuesday, pointing out that the national broadcaster is faced with a strange dilemma of trying to balance economics and its role as a public service broadcaster.

"We are trying to see whether we can do something with the opening match and then the semi-final and final games of the soccer World Cup," the official said, adding that taking all the matches on a six-hour delayed telecast basis would not be prudent.

Since the soccer matches, if telecast on DD, would be under the sponsored category, Ten Sports would have to pay a certain amount of telecast fee to Prasar Bharati and, in return, will get a certain amount of free-commercial time for hawking on every 30-minute basis.

Admitting that Doordarshan is under "severe pressure from viewers and policy-makers alike," the official said: "We are sitting on the horns of dilemma. If we decide to telecast the soccer matches then it would have to be on a delayed basis of at least six hours. If we go ahead and do it, then viewers will not get anything extra as in six hours time results of matches would have already been known in this age of information superhighway, even if the matches have not already been seen on Ten Sports."

The official further pointed out that if DD decides to give the soccer World Cup a complete go-by since Ten Sports has the exclusive telecast rights for the Indian region, it was sure to attract lot of flak from politicians and the public.

DD also does not see much revenue flowing in from the delayed telecast of the soccer matches.

Prasar Bharati, overseeing the functioning of Doordarshan and All India Radio and one of the biggest broadcasters in the world, is smarting under the fact that it cannot telecast live the World Cup matches as Ten Sports has with it exclusive satellite and terrestrial rights and had written to DD earlier that the pubcaster would not be permitted to air the soccer games live.

Viacom-owned children‘s channel Nickelodeon will soon be broadcast in China after the localisation of all programme content, a recent report says.
Viacom launched Nickelodeon programming in China on 1 May, 2001 with a half-hour show. Content was initially "live action" produced by Nickelodeon but eventually expanded to co-produced programming, including animation.

Li Yifei, general manager of MTV China, in an interview with China Business in Beijing, was quoted as saying Nickelodeon‘s target viewers are children between the ages of two and 16. Currently, several hundred provincial and municipal television stations in China have aired some Nickelodeon programmes, which have reached an audience of 300 million to 500 million Chinese, including children in 80 million households.

In a swift turn around on Monday, the Bangladesh government lifted its ban on 11 of the 13 satellite channels it had imposed on Sunday.
The Bangladeshi ministry of information has now decided to give broadcast permission to all but two, MTV and Channel V, according to a report in national newspaper, Daily Star. The two continue to be penalised for their ‘ adverse impact of alien culture on religious and social values‘. The government had, after a five hour long meeting with cable ops, broadcasters and distributors on Sunday, decided to suspend broadcast of 13 satellite channels, both pay and FTA including HBO, Star Movies, Star World, MTV, Channel V, MGM, Hallmark, AXN, RAI TV, PTP, TVE, and SNTV.

The official handout, says the Daily Star, said the government reconsidered its earlier decision after reviewing the pleas by the satellite channel distributors. The distributors appealed to Information Secretary Mirza Tasadduk Hossain Beg yesterday for reconsideration of the decision, it added.

While the govenrment had gone ahead with the ban despite opposition by representatives of two distributors, Abul Khair Litu of Nationwide Communications and Humayun Majid of Translink, it has now ignored the rest of the stakeholders that include cable ops, channels, including BTV, ETV, Channel-i and ATN Bangla who supported the ban. M/S Nationwide distributes 27 out of 30 channels, while M/S Translink distributes the rest.

"It is surprising as well as suspicious that the government changed its mind so quickly," a member of the Cable Operators Association of Bangladesh (COAB) has been quoted by the Daily Star as saying."