Maran, SunTV and TamilNadu : The romance rages on
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MDMK leader Vaiko’s allegation that Union Minister Dayanidhi Maran has been pressurising, even threatening, Mr Ratan Tata virtually to hand over Tata DTH [Direct to Home] project to his family may end up as more than just an allegation by a political rival during an election campaign.
As for Dayanidhi Maran, when contacted at Coimbatore where he was on his election campaign, he evaded a direct reply when this website’s newspaper asked him whether the allegation that he had put pressure on Tatas to grab the Tata DTH project was true. Instead, he spoke disparagingly about Vaiko.
The Tatas presently hold 80 per cent of the project and Murdoch 20 per cent. The Maran family has acquired a DTH license. But there is a rider to that. Under its terms the Sun TV cannot hold more than 20 per cent like the Star TV cannot hold more than 20 per cent in the Tata Sky project. It has to find a partner for 80 per cent and also investment of thousands of crores!
Dish TV, a DTH venture in which Zee Telefilms has a 20 per cent stake, had 7,50,000 pay-TV subscriptions in December 2005 and is expected to have reached approximately one million subscriptions by March 2006. Tata Sky, a $500-million DTH joint venture between the Tatas and News Corp, is expected to be launched after June and it plans to acquire around one million subscriptions by this year. DTH ventures from Reliance and Sun TV are also likely to come to the market over the next year or two, the report said.
The plus for DTH is that it is backed by large corporates and vertically integrated media majors, both of whom will be able to subsidise set top boxes (STBs) and invest in programming, technology and marketing, the study said.
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