Who’s afraid of conditional access?
Reprinted from the Indian Express,
TELESCOPE
Pay CAS and watch TV
Shailaja Bajpai
CAS? Conditional Access System? Sounds like a transit visa between
If the Government has its stated way, in two months from now, you will pay for free TV channels and pay TV channels. Which is what you have been doing all along but never mind that. Come July, you will pay lower rates for free-to-air channels (DD, BBC) and higher ones for different pay channels (Star Plus, Sony). Which is what you have been doing all along but never mind that, too. You will receive free-to-air channels which aren’t free and the pay channels you pay for. So bid a tearful farewell to French TV5, German DW, Japanese NHK,
Kairali, Alpha A, B, C, D (named after vitamin pills?) which you never paid for any
way, but never mind that either.
Before CAS, you switched in and out of 67 channels for a princely monthly fee of Rs 00.00 if
you had a stolen connection, and up to Rs 300 if you were a law abiding innocent. After CAS you will pay approximately the same amount for 30 free channels and about 20 pay channels. That’s if you wish to rendez vous with Parvati, Kkusum, Manju, Michael Schumacher, Shah Rukh Khan, Brad Pitt — and Simi Garewal. Never mind her. Concentrate on your future. Which is looking rather bleak, if you are the kind who resents paying more for less. If
there is one thing we Indians hate it is to pay (at all) and to pay more for less, why, this can end in one way only — badly.
Worse. You will have to purchase a CAS set top box (that is its official designation) at over Rs
1,000. You may also pay a different rate from other human species who live across the road from you. Yes, channel rates could be fixed according to income. In the spirit of Marxian economics, the government may ask us to pay according to our need and ability. It’s enough to make you migrate to
Much worse. If you think you can point a finger at Star Plus, Sony, Zee, ESPN, NDTV 24x7, HBO, MAX and say, ‘‘Okay, please make me a bouquet of that, that and that’’, you are making a bigger mistake than Ganguly did in choosing to bat first against Australia in the World Cup final. No, ji. You will be offered a choice between already assembled bouquets. You don’t get to pick out singles — you never did in any case, but never mind that.
To confound confusion, there’s a distinct possibility that pay channels we don’t select will become free but, of course, they won’t be free because we’ll be paying for them any way but, hopefully, we’ll pay less rather than more. Got it? What CAS won’t do is improve the quality of the cable transmission or the services of the cable operator or indeed, of the programmes. Yet, the Minister for Information and Broadcasting insists CAS will empower the viewer.
Well, power invariably brings with it headaches and CAS is a migraine the size of
A headache not merely for the viewer but the cable operator, the broadcaster and the poor people who have to ensure CAS is implemented — who ever they are. Imagine visiting Mumbai’s largest slum and going from one jhuggi to another jhopdi in search of a little black box — knowing you won’t find one because people there cannot afford it or won’t buy it. Yet, how much would you be willing to wager that they will still watch pay channels?
Which leads to the delightful suspicion that CAS is meant for those who can pay — and/or can be compelled to pay. Which is what has been happening all along, anyway, but never mind that.
Shailaja Bajpai is the television critic of the Indian Express. Contact: shailajabajpai@hotmail.com