World Snooker Championship faces TV blackout
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Foreign players warm up in the practice room. |
By Rajnandini Ghosh
BANGALORE (Dec. 2)—State broadcaster Doordarshan has cocked a snook at the World Snooker Championship being held in Bangalore by choosing not to cover the event.
“Doordarshan had promised to telecast the event live first and do a deferred telecast later,” the secretary of the Billiards and Snooker Federation of India, S. Balasubramanium, said. “Now it is not being covered at all.”
Balasubramanium said Doordarshan finally agreed to telecast the matches as a relay from 10:30 p.m. to 6 a.m.
“Who would watch the match at such unearthly hours?” Balasubramanium said, explaining why he refused Doordarshan’s proposal to telecast the matches in the wee hours.
He said many sponsors backed out once Doordarshan was not in the picture anymore.
With as many as 82 players participating from 40 countries across the globe, it’s a shame that India could not showcase this event to the world.
H.R. Ratan Kumar, vice president of Karnataka State Billiards Association was also extremely disappointed.
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| The IBSF World Snooker Championship 2011 now being staged in Bangalore has not received much media attention. |
He said Doordarshan had been KSBA’s media partner for many years, and that “such an unpleasant incident was not required.”
He wasn’t sure why Doordarshan refused to cover the event live.
According to Kumar, Mr. Ishwara from Doordarshan, who has been the chief person looking after this event, is “hiding in the bush.”
‘They asked us to leave’
“Doordarshan is not covering the event because KSBA did not like the timing we offered them,” said Mr. Ishwara, Doordarshan’s producer of the event. “They asked us to leave.”
Private channels charge as much as Rs. 5 million for such an event, which stopped the KSBA from approaching them. A draft of Rs. 96,293 has been paid to Doordarshan, which it has promised to refund.
Players who spoke to The SoftCopy, however, said they felt the championship had not been affected due to the rift between KSBA and Doordarshan.
Sergey Isayenko, a player from Russia who did not make it to the quarterfinals, said: “In spite of being an amateur circuit, the standard of the game is very high. The winners will get a ticket to the pro-circuit.”
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