The SUNny Story

by Nikhil

Welcome back!

After a hiatus, I am back.

There is no free lunch. This adage is proven to be more than true once again. The Sun and Udaya channels under the Sun umbrella are no more free. It was sometime back that Teja was made a pay channel.So,3 of 4 “primary” Sun Network Channels are PAY now!

August 1 turned out to be nighmarish to thousands of “poor “cable viewers in TN and Karnataka when their favourite channel(s) went off air. For a few whose cable operators who signed up, things were the same.

Why do these media moghuls adopt a free now, pay later strategy?

Nothing but to woo viewers and make the channel a part and parcel of their lives and later make it so unavoidable that the poor viewer will be forced to sign up for these pay channels.

Even, Murdoch tried it.

And why are they not trying the same in Kerala?

The Surya, Sun’s Malayalam arm is neck to neck with Asianet to grab the the top position. And the Hathway owned MSO Asianet SatCom plus smaller cable opertators will not let Surya for that matter anybody to be PAY. They are so strong that ESPN Star Sports, Ten Sports et al sometimes budge to their demands in price cuts. Surya will not take the risk as a consumer uprising would push them out of the market.

(HLL had to pay the price of a strike by its distributors during the LDF rule , Henko managed to eat a good share of the chaotic pie, even though the consumer giant HLL came back with a vengeance to regain the top slot)

Sun Network, as I said earlier has the biggest library of regional movies making it easier for others to “steal” songs and clippings for their own channels. Kairali and Asianet does a lot of such copyright( and related rights) infringements.(Sadly, even the rich Surya does it to a certain extent)

So they have introduced water marking in their transmission. (inspiration Microsoft’s corbis.com or our Gandhi Notes?)

The Sun group owns the maximum number of regional movie rights. They own an excellent Cable Network in TN.(Sumangali). They have a say in law making(who else ,hamara Maran Jr). So why not take the viewers for a ride. That is their idea.

Why should the viewer pay for entertainment? It is not like sports were Millions of Dollars are spent for rights. Its a picayune they pay for Movie rights and amass thousands through ads.

The “Marantricks” has put the consumer in a limbo. The consumer is confused whether to save every penny for CAS or DTH for welcome these sinister moves.

Long live the consumer. May his interests be protected…