BBC and Star News - eat your hearts out. CNN looks set to win the viewership battle around the US elections coverage amongst upscale English speaking Indian viewers. CNBC India is likely to be a close second.

Did the US election capture the eyeballs of the Indian masses? Did the local news channels such as Zee News, DD, Star News, Jain TV, Sun, Eenadu find viewers? Quite unlikely but one will have to wait for the ratings reports to emerge to find out how they really fared.

Meanwhile, the news is that CNN won the all-news-network ratings war on Tuesday in both primetime and total-day categories, while MSNBC pushed back Fox News Channel (FNC) into third spot.

CNN garnered a 4.7 Nielsen Media Research rating and 3.7 million households in primetime. MSNBC notched up a 3.1 rating with 1.9 million household. FNC captured a 2.76 rating and 1.5 million households.

The shares for the total-day period (6 a.m. to 6 a.m.) were as follows:

* CNN: 2.32 rating and 1.8 million households.
* MSNBC: 1.5 rating and 915,000 households
* FNC: 1.39 rating and 773,000 households

NBC led in prime time terrestrial television viewership with a 12.7 rating, an increase of 35 percent from the 1996 election. ABC with an 11.2 rating was No 2 and CBS was at No 3 with 8.4.

Cable TV addressability has been brought out into the open. Earlier this week, an Andhra Pradesh high court has said that all subscription channels should stop charging cable operators carriage fees for those channels which consumers do not want to subscribe to, according to a report in The Economic Times.
The short injunction was issued by a divisional bench consisting of chief justice Manmohan Singh Liberman and Justice G Raghuram on a public interest petition filed by a consumer S Subbarami Reddy against the I&B ministry, Prasar Bharti and Doordarshan. Reddy has made basic subscription networks such as Star TV, Zee TV, Sony and ESPN-Star TV a party to the case.

The court has told subscription TV channels to back off and not collect any money from cable TV ops until the writ petition is settled in court.

The problem with the Indian cable TV industry is that it is mostly disorganised and MSOs have little control over the end subscriber as they have not placed a set top box in his/her home which allows him/her to choose the channels he/she wants and accordingly pay for them. Only in recent times have cable TV ops starting investing in upgrading their networks making their networks return-path ready.

An estimate is that close to Rs 5,000 per subscriber is needed to be invested in cable TV infrastructure to make it addressability-ready. Of course, the subscriber will pay for part of this investment. The key issue is whether he is interested enough to pay for set top box, especially when most of the time he is wary of paying even the Rs 100-200 that he has to pay every month to the cable TV op.

Zee TV has been mulling addressability for a year or so. It has a Rs 25 billion project to place addressible set top boxes in subscribers homes, but has not been able to raise funds for it. There have been few interested buyers for the 10 per cent stake in Siticable it has offered in exchange for the funds it needs.

The TV channels are expected tofight the interim order passed by the Andhra Pradesh High Court. But it?s quite possible it may be used as a landmark judgement - just like the "opening the air waves" order was in 1994 to force the government to be more liberal about broadcasting - to force a hesitant cable TV industry to change.

Jain Studios Ltd chairman Dr J.K. Jain is keen on setting up a DTH platform and would do so, within three months of finding a partner. He disclosed this to CNBC India during an interview.

In a chat with moneycontrol.com, he said that: "Our DTH strategy as we see today is not to serve the interests of satelite channels but for the audiences who need an alternative to the present cable networks both in terms of a better quality and quantity of content. Moreover instead of monopolising the DTH opportunity we wish to act only as a facilitator for everybody who wants to be in the DTH business whether one is a Ku-band transponder owner or one is a satellite channel or a content provider or a member of the audience."

He added that his company would welcome "a 20% foreign partner in our DTH venture. Even in our other projects we keep all our options open."

Jain is believed to be close to the powers that be in the BJP. Additionally, he has in the past talked about setting up an earth station in Delhi. He runs a general entertainment and news channel, is bidding to set up several portals, and is also keen on offering free net access and bandwidth to Indian ISPs.
 

B4U Multimedia which has built up a successful music channel in B4U Music says it is interested in investing 20 per cent in a DTH platform, should it get the opportunity. The company is backed by four businessmen - Lakshmi Nivas Mittal, Gokul Binani, Bharat Shah and Kishore Lulla - and also runs an entertainment channel in India B4U Entertainment, apart from pay channels in the UK, US, and west Asia.
Speaking to indiantelevision.com B4U CEO Ravi Gupta said: "We have certain concerns relating to the DTH notification and we will be taking them to the relevant authorities. But we have taken an in-principle decision to participate in a DTH platform."

India?s space segment will be a satellite poorer with the instability of Insat 2B, a seven year old satellite which has possibly is going through the last throes of death.
The satellite lost its earth lock late Friday evening, which meant that the bird?s direction -- which is fixed to constantly face a specific side of the earth -- had changed. The change in direction resulted in the satellite?s solar panels losing their orientation towards the sun, thus preventing them from adequately charging Insat 2B?s solar batteries. When Isro engineers discovered this, they shut down the satellite on Friday.

The engineers disclosed that "the recovery attempts have become difficult due to depleted condition of the oxidizer on board the satellite, which is required for orbit and attitude control."

However, they got it back under control and it started humming once more on Saturday, restoring services to some telecommunications and broadcast users. Insat 2B has 10-12 transponders that were being used to support telecommunications, VSats (Very Small Aperture Terminals) and radio networking functions. But then they lost control again, and this has been recurring repeatedly when they manage to rescue to it.

Isro is supposed to reach a decision on 6 November on whether it will continue with its recovery efforts or let the satellite die.

Broadcasters such as Star News - through New Delhi Television - use the V-Sats for electronic news gathering from its correspondents nationwide.

Isro has moved the users of the satellite to transponders on Insat 3C.

Zee Telefilms Ltd (ZTL) announced yesterday that it was setting up a DTH television joint venture with Sterling group?s C.Sivasankaran. According to sources, the actual vehicle is likely to be ZTL?s cable networking company Siticable.
The thinking within the ZTL is that since is Siticable already has its distribution infrastructure (team of people) in place, it would be better if it participates in the project.

The extent of equity is not known because the DTH notification passed last week does not permit existing broadcasters and cable TV companies from investing more than 20 per cent in DTH service provider. ZTL chairman Subhash Chandra has protested against this clause and is lobbying hard to have it changed.

I&B minister Sushma Swaraj has said that the restriction is essential to prevent the emergence of vertical monopolies in broadcasting.

One tends to believe that one has not heard the last of the joint venture; other equity partners may also be lured in. Both Chandra and Siva will have their work cut out for them giving shape to the jv as both are involved in the broadcasting business, should the government not revoke the equity restriction clause.

Yesterday, Sivasankaran, told local financial daily Business Standard: "We are happy to join forces with country?s leading content provider Zee Network. We have already signed agreements for channels such as the Sun Network, Udaya and Asianet. We also have an in principle undertstanding with established foreign and Indian channels to be on the DTH platform...served with a DTV card which will have a one-time cost as low as Rs 995."

The simple version of the DTH set-top box will be available to the household at less than Rs 5,000 per box, Sivasankaran told Business Standard.