Tomorrow Sony Entertainment Television joins Star India and Zee TV as a completely pay-driven bouquet with its flagship channel becoming fully encrypted.

The channel will be available at a sticker price of Rs 12 while the whole bouquet of Sony Entertainment, Set Max, AXN and CNBC India will cost Rs 22, Shantonu Aditya, senior vice-president, franchise channels & distribution, says. In the two main metros Delhi and Mumbai the price has been fixed at Rs 12 but the rate is lower in the smaller centres, Aditya revealed.

Aditya said a total of 10,000 set top boxes would be rolled out across the country over the next 15 days. Four thousand set tops had been distributed so far, with another 2,000 expected to be in place by 3 September, Aditya said.

Sony uses the more expensive Scientific Atlanta box that will put back the cable operator by Rs 12,000 initially and with a balance of Rs 8,000 to be paid after six months. Sony is subsidising the box to the tune of Rs 15,000 with the actual cost being Rs 35,000, Aditya said.

Queried as to how cable operators would respond, Aditya said most had signed on to the new dispensation.

While Sony‘s going pay has been on the cards for some time, how the move will impact on its viewership at a time when it has been losing cachet with audiences will be watched closely.

Information & Broadcasting minister Sushma Swaraj has scheduled a meeting today evening at 5:00 pm with cable operators where major issues impacting the industry are to be thrashed out.

The meeting is to be held at the Shastri Bhavan (I&B ministry headquarters) in New Delhi.

In a note sent to all major MSOs and cable operators, Swaraj has set down two main topics for discussion - conditional access systems and the rampant piracy prevailing in the cable industry. Piracy is an issue which has come to the fore with the measures taken by the producers of two recent blockbuster movies - Gaddar and Lagaan - to ensure that their films were not shown own cable. That the effort - in spite of a high court ruling in the producers‘ favour - was largely a failure is another matter.

Representing the Hinduja-promoted INCablenet is its president Rajiv Vyas while the Rajan Raheja-promoted Hathway Cable (in which Star India has a 26 per cent stake) is being represented by its V-P North SN Sharma.

That‘s Life! It took all of 14 years of litigation for the rights of the popular eighties comedy Yeh Joi Hai Zindagi to finally land with the creator of the TV programme - the late filmmaker S.S. Oberoi.

And the irony of it all is that quite a few people associated with the serial are no more: Shafi Inamdar (who plays the harangued but loved and loving husband of the beautiful Swaroop Sampat), writer Sharad Joshi and Oberoi himself.

The series - which ran successfully on DD National in 1984-85 - was sponsored by toothpaste maker Vicco Laboratories (owned by the Nagpur-based Pendharkar family which makes Vicco Vajradanti and Turmeric cream) for all of 52-54 episodes.

Thereafter DD increased the rates it was charging for the time slot, and the Pendharkars decided they could not continue with the sponsorship. Oberoi, who had made successful commercials for Vicco and Nirma, then approached Brooke Bond for a sponsorship and got its backing. The series continued for another 13-15 episodes before it was pulled off when the Vicco promoters said they owned the rights to it as they were the sponsors.

They took the matter to the City civil court in Mumbai in 1986 which turned down its plea. Vicco then approached the Mumbai high court in 1990, which once again ruled in Oberoi‘s favour in 1998. Vicco finally went to The Supreme Court in 2000, which also dismissed its special leave petition seeking ownership of Yeh Jo Hain Zindagi on 13 August 2001.

"There were no contracts signed; no one knew anything about copyright then," says Ujwala Oberoi, Oberoi‘s daughter. "The Supreme Court ruling is a vindication that the ownership of a creative product lies with the person who creates it."

The rib-tickling series featured other actors like Satish Shah, Rakesh Bedi and Tikku Talsania drew nearly 93 per cent viewership in 1984-85.

Ujwala says that the series has since been upgraded to digi beta format (it was shot on low band) since then and quite a few channels have evinced interest in buying up the rights. Well, that‘s life once again.