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'Business interest, not moral ground led to channel ban'

REAZ AHMAD
Business interests of a vested quarter instead of the much-vaunted moral reasons worked behind the government's banning some popular satellite channels on Sunday, sources in the cable business said yesterday.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, the sources said that a certain quarter zeroed in on the burgeoning satellite channel business involving crores of taka and moved to push the two existing distributors out of their monopoly trade.
Meanwhile, a day after reopening of the banned channels, television viewers in many parts of Dhaka
are still deprived of enjoying the satellite channels as connections of some cable operators were snapped due to a persisting conflict between the cable operators and distributors.
General viewers have to suffer a lot because of this conflict as, some sources pointed out, some gangsters using political identities have got involved in cable business in recent months.
Due to snapping of connections by one of the two distributors, viewers in some 20,000 households in old part of the city and Dhanmondi, Jigatola, Lalmatia, Kalabagan, Azimpur, BUET and Dhaka University areas now cannot watch
most of the pay channels excepting ESPN, Star Sports and Home Box Office (HBO).
Sources said, some 3200 members and associate members of Cable Operators Association of Bangladesh (COAB) get monthly subscription fees of Taka 200 to Taka 500 from each household connection. For pay channels, two distributors -- M/S Nationwide
Communication and M/S Translink-together get roughly Tk four crore a month from the cable operators.
Attracted by the huge sums of money the satellite business involves, certain quarters were trying to get into the market for quite some time by gaining distributorship of certain channels. Those quarters, in connivance with certain cable operators, allegedly persuaded the authorities concerned to impose ban on some popular channels on the pretext of erosion of moral values by alien cultures.
However, the option of revoking the ban was kept open as evident from the information minister's statement that the government would reconsider the channel issue if members of the public demand so.
Sunday's ban on 13 pay and 'free-to-air' (FTA) channels had immediate and tremendous reaction in various sections of the society, including high ups in the government.
Sources said some senior ministers had talks with Minister for Information Tariqul Islam on the issue and two distributors also protested the ban and called for immediate review of them decision. Some cabinet members felt that when there was no public demand for banning any channel, such a move should not have been taken by a ministry. Rather, if the issue was so pressing, it could be raised at a cabinet meeting.
A representative of Nationwide told The Daily Star yesterday that by bringing allegations of rate increase and VAT evasion against the distributors, certain cable operators had long been lobbying for closure of the popular channels. Nationwide is the distributor of 27 channels belonging to Star, Sony and Zee groups.
Humaiyun Majid, Proprietor of Translink, distributor of three other channels -- ESPN, Star Sports and HBO -- said "HBO (Home Box Office), an American channel, is the world's number one in home entertainment. Certain quarters were vying for distributorship of HBO for quite some time, but I was awarded its distributorship recently." This led them to 'conspire,' he said without giving details.
Majid said that if the government really wanted to preserve and uphold moral values of the society, it should have banned all channels airing obscene programmes, no matter whether those are American or Indian or Bangladeshi channels.
It may be pointed out that President of the Cable Operators Association of Bangladesh (COAB) SM Anwar Parvez expressed disap-
pointment at what he said snapping of channel lines by a distributor out of vengeance. But in Sunday's meeting, he supported banning of the channels while the distributors opposed it.
M/S Nationwide Communication snapped connection of Dhaka Cable Vision (DCV), one of the largest cable operators, on Monday night. DCV proprietor Md Arif told this correspondent yesterday that some 8,000 households in Dhanmondi, Lalmatia, Kalabagan, Elephant Road, Azimpur, BUET and DU areas could not view the channels because of connection snapping.
The same thing happened in Lalbagh, Kotwali, Sutrapur areas in the old part of the city.
An official of Nationwide said they snapped connections as some of the cable operators did not pay their dues.
While cable operators in old Dhaka have been asking for tailor-made package of channels, distributors argued that they should subscribe the channels under the existing package system. Package system means, one cable operator has to take a certain number of channels in one package and pay for the whole. However, some cable operators prefer to take one or two channels from one package and two or three other channels from another package.
In the context of rapid change in government decisions regarding satellite channels, the COAB convened a meeting of its executive body on Saturday.
Its president Anwar Parvez said if uncertainty persists and distributors continue to press for more pay channels, "We have to quit this business.”