Reports of a concerted backlash from across the country to the 1 March increase in Star‘s subscription rates appeared unlikely on Monday, with company officials confident that most cable operators would accept the Rs 30 monthly price tag on the Star bouquet.

However, reports that the Cable Sena of Maharashtra had scheduled a meeting for tomorrow (Tuesday) could not be confirmed. The Cable Sena is affiliated to the Shiv Sena, the party in opposition in the western state of Maharashtra, where Mumbai is located.

Senior Star officials said except for Calcutta and a few pockets, over 80 per cent of the rest of the country had accepted the new rate structure. There were some reports that operators in six districts in southern Karnataka were planning to black out Star from the 15th but that has been sorted out, the officials said. The problem actually related to mode of payment rather than anything else, it was pointed out.

But 30 cable network owners of north Chhattisgarh region of India are firm in their resolve to black out Star. The have vowed to remove all channels of the Star bouquet because the channel had "revised it‘s subscription fees twice in the current year." A statement put out by the operators said: "Moreover all cable operators are angry with the marketing policy of the Star TV as they were forced to subscribe to Star Gold channel by the dealers of Star TV, which is a costly channel with no ratings at all."

On Friday, 9 February, the Economic Times featured a report saying that the government may finally come around on the vexed issue of 20 per cent sectoral and foreign equity cap on broadcasters for direct-to-home broadcasting.

It is something the broadcasting sector has been lobbying for ever since the government finally gave clearance for DTH in November 2000. The report quoted officials in the information and broadcasting ministry.

There was a rider however. The government was not going back on the issue of revenue sharing with DTH service providers, it was reported.

The guidelines issued by the government stipulated a revenue sharing arrangement of 10 per cent as annual fee for the licence period of ten years. Broadcasters have been asking for a five-year moratorium on revenue-sharing.

It may be noted that just a few days earlier it had been reported that while the government was ready for a rethink on the revenue sharing arrangement it was firm that the 20 per cent cap sectoral and foreign equity cap would stay.

A day after the Holi festivities on Sunday, 11 February, after everyone got back to ground reality so to speak I&B minister Sushma Swaraj is toting the old government line: no chance of any change in DTH guidelines. And she‘s promised yet again that the DTH guidelines will be out next week.

Don‘t be too sure though. It was on 16 February that Swaraj had last promised that the guidelines would be out in a week.

The post-budget blues of India‘s stock exchanges continued today with Mumbai Stock exchange‘s Sensex breaching the 3800-mark as banks entered the fray to sell the shares given to them as collaterals against loans. The last hour saw panic selling in tech and media counters that took the Sensex to a four-month low of 3762.

This is the third major fall since last Monday. Last Thursday also saw a plunge on fears of a payments crisis in the Calcutta and Ahmedabad stock exchanges.

Media stocks were hammered drastically till the end of the day wherein Hinduja TMT (down 14%), SaReGaMa (down 11%), Sri Adhikari, Jain Studios (both down 13%), GV Films, Cinevista, ETC Networks, Padmalaya Tele, Balaji Tele, Pritish Nandy Communication, Creative Eye hit the 8% lower circuit. There was heavy selling pressure in TV 18 counters and the scrip finally closed at Rs140, down Rs5 (earlier up 10%). However, Tips was the only major gainer among the media stocks.

Zee Telefilms, clocked the top volumes on BSE and NSE at 10 million and 14.9 million shares respectively.

After remaining in the positive for most part of the trading session, Zee drifted into the negative territory. The scrip ended at Rs 114, down 2.44 per cent.

The Sensex lost 182 points from the intra-day high of 3931 and finally closed at 3768, down by 114 points (2.9%).

In an effort to curb volatility, the SEBI had imposed additional margins on net outstanding to 25% from 10%. As a result, the total volumes on BSE and NSE have declined sharply to 84 million and 105 million shares respectively compared to their normal volumes.

The NSE Nifty Index closed at 1197.95, down by 56.80 points (-4.5%) and the CSE Index closed at 125.23, down by 4.2 points (-3.2%).

And with no immediate relief expected at the NASDAQ tech-laded index, it seems that the worst is still to come.