The Hindu Business Line : A CAS of status quo in Chennai

THE conditional access system (CAS) is one-year-old in Chennai today but the city's television viewing populace still doesn't seem fascinated by set-top boxes — devices that help access pay channels.

According to estimates, over 40,000 boxes have been sold or rented out, which is par for the course — three months into CAS, Business Line had reported the offtake of set-top boxes to be between 8,000 and 14,000. It is estimated that there are 12 lakh cable and satellite homes in the city.

The offtake could have been substantial had not live cricket reached Chennai's homes through the Doordarshan feed, says an official of a cable TV operators' union. He says the occasional spurts in offtake have been because of sporting events.

The lukewarm response to the `boxes' have, in a way, established clear viewing patterns. But an official of a prominent media house claims that the system still lacks transparency, and under-declaration still reigns. The multi-system operators (MSOs), which link broadcasters and the cable operators, could not be reached for a comment on this issue.

Over 80 per cent of viewers watching Tamil channels, which are free-to-air, are happy with halved bills post-CAS, says a media planner, who reckons that many viewers of English and Hindi channels have opted for other sources of entertainment like cinema. Of course, some of them have opted for the `boxes.'

Though a minority, Chennai's pre-CAS viewership share among the top six cities for channels like Star Movies, ESPN and AXN had been between 17 and 25 per cent.

CAS, the media planner says, thus, gave a handle for media planners to negotiate advertisement rates. But Chennai's absence from the radars of several pay channels hasn't been considered that significant, he adds.

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