CSN to close March 1st

According to reports being received, Carlton Sports Network (CSN) is to shutdown from 1st March. Accordingly employees have been sent on leave & many are being compensated for the loss. Claiming to be a sports dedicated channel this channel however devoted much of its time to non sports related programming as well.

The channel has a redistribution agreement with Setanta Sports for the "LIVE" broadcast of rugby & has also used the transmitters of ITN to carry out it's activities. It should be stated that they used the license held by ITN to carry out their operations, since they commenced operations with the closure of Prime TV. With the channel closing down, we are not certain whether the operations will be taken over by another party. Prime TV may or may not return since that channel too was a failure.

We hope that the Setanta deal will be worked with another party, probably MTV Sports. CSN was on the verge of telecasting the ICC World Cup using rights stripped from SLRC which thankfully ended up back in SLRC's hands.

Even though it's sad to see a channel go, however the unethical practices of this channel were bound to return & bite them, one day or the other.

The demise of NTV

A few ago we witnessed the birth of a brand new channel called NTV. The channel had pathetic coverage and even more pathetic was it's content. Mainly consisting of repeats of popular TV shows, this channel was doomed from the start. Apart from a few shows the only watchable content was some classical songs that they played from time to time.

The idea behind the channel was good but the execution was a mess. The channel had no chance in the face of competition from Pay TV services and local FTA English channels.

It's actually good to have a state operated English language, but the next time this is tried out maybe more locally produced English content is the way to go.

NTV had potential but no vision. R.I.P NTV!

All about the World Cup, or is it?

Three years after the entire fiasco regarding the awarding of Cricket rights was played out, SLRC has been thrust forward as the official broadcaster of all things cricket involving Sri Lanka. CSN which was unceremoniously stripped of the rights over non payment of dues to ESPN Star Sports and has now been relegated to a sports channel that only has sports as part of their branding.

This was bound to happen, the high handed tactics used to obtain the same rights has now been used against them. It's sad though as the only television channel brave enough to dwell into the sports genre & did show a spark of promise only fall victim to changing political culture.

It's arguable whether it is correct to specifically target a channel with taxes designed for it. However we should remind ourselves that CSN didn't play fair too.

The future for CSN seems bleak, the channel may rebrand itself or may sell out.  Then there remains the question on the legality of the CSN transmitters.

The good news is that SLRC with it's superior coverage will be telecasting the World Cup & it seems that in the future private broadcasters will be able to bid for major sporting events. This move was expected too since, if we could call the previous regime's pet "CSN", then the present one's pet is most likely the Maharaja trio of "Sirasa TV, Shakthi TV & MTV Sports".

One thing is certain, this is more political poker than a fight for World Cup rights!