Staff Reporter :
Millions of television viewers in Bangladesh could not watch any foreign TV channel on Friday and Saturday, as the cable operators halted the service as per the government’s directives in the interest of “clean feed” programmes.
Cable Operators Association of Bangladesh (COAB) said that they had stopped airing the foreign channels, as all of those telecast advertisement also. As such, the government has asked all to follow rules. But many TV viewers expressed surprise at the decision.
Mridul Sikder, said that he enjoys sports on TV screens regularly. But he will not be able now to watch sports, soccer and cricket particularly. It is really painful.
Contrarily, housewife Razia has Sultana supported the government move. She said, our interest is more important to us.
However, the COAB leaders fear that it will not be possible to retain subscribers if cable operator services are continued with only 34 Bangladeshi channels.
They said viewers will move to various OTT platforms, including YouTube, Facebook, for watching their favourate shows. As a result, cable operators will suffer losses financially. At some point it will be difficult for them to sustain the business.
The COAB leaders came up with the apprehenstion at a press conference held at a hotel in the capital yesterady in the wake of the government’s decision to shut down foreign channels without clean feed.
SM Anwar Parvez, the founding president of COAB, said, “We are abiding by the order given by the government. The Ministry of Information is our guardian. On behalf of the cable operators, I humbly appeal to the Information Minister to take an initiative so that we can reactivate at least those foreign channels which are closed till the digitization process is completed.”
He also raised the demand to ammend the Cable Television Network Management Act 2007.
“We have built this cable industry in the last 25 years and livelohhod of four lakh people is envolved in it. Considering the fact, the Ministry of Information should reactive the fireign channels,” he added.
Officials from the Information and Broadcasting Ministry said that several foreign channels had agreed to broadcast clean feed programme for Bangladeshi people. Suspensions of those channels will be pulled out.
Information and Broadcasting Minister Hasan Mahmud on Saturday said that Bangladesh had been deprived of Tk 2000 crore every year due to airing foreing channels with advertisement.
“If those channels follow our relevant law of airing, their programmes with clean feed norm, our country will get Tk 2000 crore investment annually in this sector,” the minister said while addressing a function in Chittagong organized to celebrate PM’s birthday.
He said that no is allowed to run foreign TV channels without clean feed in the neighboring countries like India, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Pakistan.
Meanwhile, media analytics said that it would not be easy to get advertisement’s in local broadcasters.
“It hhas to go a long way to make our local channels capable to get advertisements from the foreign companies,” said Sumon Rahman, Professor of University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh, a private university. He said, the local channels have to prepare contents like their foreign counterparts.
Earlier, the foreign channels were allowed to broadcast programmes in Bangladesh ensuring advertisement-free contents. The decision to stop telecasting by foreign TVs with advertisements was taken at a meeting on September 16.
Later, the government sent a notification to the cable operators giving the deadline of September 30.Since Friday morning, viewers from different parts of the country said that they could not watch the foreign channels.
