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Our Bureau

New Delhi , Oct. 1

THE legal battle surrounding the awarding of telecast rights to Sony Entertainment Television for the forthcoming Australia tour of India is getting complicated with the Prasar Bharati CEO, Mr K.S. Sarma, saying that the national broadcaster would approach the Supreme Court on Monday.

"We are an aggrieved party. We felt that it would be given to Prasar Bharati as we had bid higher than Sony," said Mr Sarma after the launch of the National Commodity Exchange ticker service on Doordarshan News. Prasar Bharati offered Rs 704 crore against Sony's Rs 600 crore for the four-year telecast rights.

Mr Sarma said that for one week, the BCCI had been saying at different forums that it would produce the cricket series and telecast it on Doordarshan. "And now what we hear is a totally different thing."

He said that Doordarshan is the incumbent (outgoing) broadcaster having held the rights for the last five years. The CEO said that during the earlier negotiations, the BCCI had asked the national broadcaster to pay over Rs 1,400 crore for the rights - something that it rejected.

On Thursday, the BCCI announced that it would arrange for live telecast of the international cricket matches, beginning with the India-Australia series, and said that Ten Sports would produce the feed while Sony would be responsible for telecast, distribution and marketing.

Asked whether Prasar Bharati would have marketed the series as well as Sony and shared advertising revenue with the BCCI, Mr Sarma said, "In terms of marketing cricket, Doordarshan today is totally different from what it was years ago." He said the successful marketing of the India-West Indies and India-Australia-New Zealand tri-series fetched record revenues for Prasar Bharati.

The Secretary of the Information and Broadcasting Ministry, Mr Navin Chawla, who launched the National Commodity Exchange ticker service on DD, steered clear of any questions on the telecast rights row.

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