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The Telecom Disputes Settlement and Appellate Tribunal on Wednesday directed Zee-Turner, distributors of Zee and other channels to provide its signals to Tata Sky, a direct-to-home service provider.
"Respondent (Zee-Turner) would supply all its 32 channels from all bouquets to the petitioner (Tata Sky) within 48 hours," said TDSAT chairman Justice Arun Kumar, admitting the prayer of Tata Sky, an 80:20 Tata-Star venture, in this regard.
During the proceedings, Tata Sky, requested the tribunal to direct Zee-Turner to provide signals to fix subscription rate somewhere in between the price demanded by Zee (Rs 150) and that proposed by the company (Rs 118).
"Now festive season of Deepawali is coming -- in which lots of entertainment programmes are telecast and our consumer base would suffer because of non-availability of these feeds," contended senior counsel Abhishek Manu Singhvi, appearing for Tata Sky.
"Any delay in this issue would ultimately hamper the commercial interest of this new venture" he said. Accepting it, the Telecom Disputes Settlement and Appellate Tribunal directed both of them to finish their pleadings before November.
"Our subscribers are suffering due to non-availability of Zee-Turner's programme -- we are incurring losses to tune of Rs 2 crore (Rs 20 million) daily and even our staffs are unutilised," contended Singhvi.
However, the TDSAT chairman rejected Tata Sky's request to fix the charge by taking the middle path and made it clear that Tata Sky would have to pay Rs 75, which works out to 50 per cent of the subscription fee demanded by Zee-Turner for its 32 channels.
Meanwhile, the tribunal also said that if the charges were found more than Rs 118, the price that Tata Sky is willing to pay, then Zee-Turner would refund rest of the amount.
Zee Turner is a 74:26 joint venture between Zee Telefilms and Turner International India, a sister company of Time-Warner.
Tata Sky had filed the case against Zee group, in the first week of July charging it with denial of signals and fixing exorbitant cost for providing the same.
The tribunal had also suggested that both the broadcast majors could 'sit across the table and come to an agreement' to settle the matter amicably.
At present, Zee-Turner markets its channels in five bouquets. Bouquet one comprises Zee TV, Zee Cinema, Zee Movies, Zee English, CNN, Cartoon Network, CNBC, Trendz, Reality TV, Zee Marathi, Zee Punjabi, Zee Bangla and Zee Gujarati, while bouquet two contains HBO, Vh1, Pogo, Zee Business and Awaaz.
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