How the government goofed up on CAS

[icernet-admin at listserv.cddc.vt.edu]

The biggest media story of the year is the utterly ham-handed manner in
which the Union Ministry of Information & Broadcasting bungled the
implementation of a conditional access system (CAS) for cable television
viewers. CAS was supposed to be consumer-friendly. It was meant to provide
greater choice to viewers and was intended to bring a semblance of order in
a disorganised industry. Instead, by exposing the deep divisions that exist
in the industry, CAS ended up highlighting the greed for "cash" at the
expense of the consumer. A more appropriate expansion of the acronym CAS
would be chaos, anarchy and strife. It is not as if other sections of the
industry are holier than thou. Broadcasters are dependent on imperfect
techniques of market research. There are barely 5,000 "people meters" to
gauge levels of viewership expressed in the form of TRPs (television rating
points) or TAM (television audience measurement) in a country in which close
to 45 million television sets (out of a total of nearly 90 million sets)
have cable and satellite connections. Yet, on the basis of these inaccurate
TRP/TAM figures, advertisers end up spending huge sums of money - roughly Rs
5,000 crore a year at present. The skirmishes that have been witnessed in
recent months over the introduction of CAS have everything to do with
sharing of the spoils and little or nothing with offering viewers greater
choice.

Source:
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