World Cup axe may fall on soap operas

While cricket fans will keep themselves glued to their television sets watching the exploits of cricketers from all over the world, soap buffs may have to live without their daily dose of Kitty Party or Kumkum.

The stakes for watching the World Cup cricket on television could be higher than ever before as the cable operators in Kolkata plan to block some channels, including HBO and STAR, to beam home the game live from South Africa.

Cable operators in the city and its fringe areas will decide on Wednesday whether or not some of these channels would be blacked out in order to beam the games live on Sony Televison's Set Max channel, which has the exclusive rights for the Cup.

The problem started when all the broadcasters hiked their rates last week sending the operators on a wild cat strike suspending operations for one night. The operators do not want to pass on the hike to the subscribers fearing it may affect their business. Thus they may opt to sacrifice some channels to pay the increased bills.

''We may decided not to show some of the packages to keep the rates at the current level,'' Cable Operators' Sangram Committee Secretary Tarak Saha said in Kolkata on Wednesday. 

Thus one of the three bouquets of Star, Zee-Turner and Modi Entertainment Network may get the axe. The Star bouquet consists of Star Movies, Star Plus, Star News and National Geographic, while the Modi Entertainment Network consists of B4U Music and B4U Movies, FTV, MTV, Channel V, DDI, DD2, Hallmark and HBO.

Zee-Turner's package includes all Zee channels, Cartoon Network and Animal Planet.

The parleys with RPG Netcom, the largest distributor in the region, have not made any headway as yet resulting in this impasse.

''We are helpless. The broadcasters have hiked their rates and we have to realise the new charges from the cable operators,'' said RPG Netcom CEO Ashim Dutta.

Saha's counter was, "They may choose not to pass on the entire hike on to us if they want. If they don't, we'll have to exclude some channels to show the Sony-Discovery package.''

UNI