Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Local Sri Lanka Cricket rights goes to CSN, SLRC refrains from bidding

Local television rights for locally played international crickets matches have gone to CSN (Carlton Sports Network), while Rupavahini the state broadcaster who held a monopoly over the local television rights since Sri Lanka gained test status have refrained from bidding.

The Carlton Sports Network was formed last february and is headed by CEO Nishantha Ranathunga who is also the SLC Secretary.

After initially winning the rights for the Australian tour of Sri Lanka last year, they have managed to bag the SLC rights for a period of three years.

It's not certain if CSN will telecast the cricket matches or will in turn sell the rights to SLRC for a higher price, since SLRC have expressed interest in securing the rights. If they are interested then the only way they can secure rights is to purchase it from CSN.

For more on this please see Dailymirror online : SLC secretary's company wins SLC's TV rights

No need of exclusive Olympic broadcaster, please share the rights

The battle between the Maharaja Television MTV/MBC & Sri Lanka Rupavahini Corporation has heated up so much that ultimately it may result in Sri Lankans who watch FTA channels being deprived of the Olympic games broadcasts due to legal wrangling. It is time that exclusive rights declaration of the Olympic Games for local FTA broadcasters in Sri Lanka be stopped with immediately effect, rather the rights should be allocated to more that one broadcaster.

The reason for this is that the Olympic's are just too big for one broadcaster to handle on their own with mutiple events happening at the same time across several venue's. SLRC has three channels Rupavahini, Channel Eye which have very good coverage and the measly NTV with little or no coverage at all. So if any events are broadcast on NTV then many will not be able to watch it. They will also slide the events broadcasts for their daily news updates, others programmes of national importance.

Maharaja's have three channels Sirasa, MTV Sports, Shakthi TV out of which only Sirasa has the best coverage and Shakthi fares better than MTV Sports in terms of coverage. They too will slide events for daily news/hourly news updates plus others of commercial importance to them.

Overall SLRC has the best coverage but we believe that the rights should be shared between SLRC & the Maharaja's who will then broadcast events making sure that Sri Lanka's will be able to watch many of the multiple events being broadcast live from London. We appeal to the International Olympic Committee, National Olympic Commitee, Ministries of Sports & Media to step in and resolve this conflict and work out the sharing of rights before this escalates further resulting in Sri Lanka's being deprived of the live broadcasts of London 2012.

In the pay television front, the rights holders of the Olympic Games ESPN Star Sports have allocated their two sports channels for the broadcast of the games and if the "ESPN" channel & "Star Sports" channel are not enough to broadcast the games then they will rope in their sister channel "Star Cricket" to broadcast events if necessary. So if a pay television dedicated Sports network would need three channels to broadcast the games then FTA non sports dedicated channels would definitely need to share the rights for a successful games broadcast.

Hiru TV launched.....

Sri Lanka's latest television channel Hiru TV launched a few hours ago. The channel which broadcasts on stereo can be received over FTA as well as on sri lankan pay television networks. After several months of testing on FTA and on the pay television networks the channel finally commenced transmissions today.

At the moment not much information is available about the content available on the channel & with no active website in place, information on content is hard to find.

The channel boasts of being digital ready & HD ready which doesn't mean that it is a digital & HD signal at the moment, rather the station can upgrade to a Digital & HD broadcast with relative ease in the future.

We wish the management & staff of ABC Networks Hiru TV all the best in their future endeavors.

Updated on May 23rd 2011 1:30pm : Hiru TV website - http://www.hirutv.lk/

Monday, May 14, 2012

Hiru TV to launch May 23rd

As reported over the media Hiru TV the latest offering by ABC Networks will be taking to the airwaves on May 23rd from 6am onwards. The channel which boasts of superior technology has had a degradation of picture quality on the local pay television platforms ever since they launched FTA test transmissions.

The channel also has ruffled some feathers by making use of frequencies reserved for other broadcasters which is more of a right royal  frequency mismanagement by the TRCSL.

We hope this channel will lead the pack and pioneer digital tv in sri lanka by becoming the first digital tv channel in the country after all it is just not enough to be digital ready & hd ready only.