The Mumbai High Court, in an interim order passed this afternoon, directed InCablenet to pay ESPN Software India for 175,000 subscriber homes.

InCablenet, in its version of the turn of events, said the court had ordered ESPN and Star Sports to restore the signals to the multisystems operator by 5:00 PM on Tuesday, pending the final hearing of the application filed by Incablenet.

As per the court‘s ruling, InCablenet was directed to deposit in court a sum of Rs 400,000 per month for an additional 25,000 subscriber homes over and above RS 2.4 million which InCablenet was paying under the contract for 150,000 subscriber homes, an ESPN release said.

The court further directed InCablenet to pay arrears for the months of May and June 2001, RS 4.8 million, within three days and a sum of RS 800,000 for additional 25,000 connections for the months of May and June 2001 to be deposited in court in seven days. The High Court has permitted ESPN to withdraw the aforesaid sum of RS 800,000 by furnishing an undertaking.

Incablenet has been directed to continue to pay for 175000 subscriber homes till further orders in the aforementioned manner. "InCablenet claims to service over 1.55 million homes in Mumbai to its advertisers and they were paying us for only 1.5 lakh homes which is less than 10 per cent of the actual homes claimed to be serviced by the MSO. We are happy with the Mumbai High Court order," Manu Sawhney, managing director, ESPN Software, said.

InCablenet on its part said it was moving the court against Star‘s decision on Monday to switch off its feed to InCablenet over a dispute similar to the one it has had with ESPN-Star Sports. Rajiv Vyas, president, INCablenet said the court‘s attention would be drawn to the statement Star‘s executive V-P, Arun Mohan, had made in an interview broadcast by CNBC on Monday. Mohan had reportedly said that Star was demanding an increase in the number of subscribers by more than 150 per cent (to 375,000 from the present 150,000). Mohan had openly stated in the same interview that it was their intention to form a cartel of pay channels to extract higher charges from television viewers, Vyas said. "It is high time that the government took note of such monopolistic actions of the pay channels coercing customers to pay more" Vyas said.

Nine Gold, the three-hour block of prime time programming on national broadcaster Doordarshan‘s Metro channel, has walked away with three awards at the 26th Annual RAPA Awards (Radio & TV Practitioners‘ Association of India), a company release states.

Nine Gold won awards in the following categories:-
* Best TV programme (Game) for Superstars, Nine Gold‘s national talent hunt show hosted by Chunky Pandey.
* Best Telefilm Direction for Mr Mehman, directed by Saurabh Shukla and a part of the popular Director‘s Cut series.
* Best TV Title Song for the popular drama Alag Alag.

Speaking on the occasion, Padmashree PS, director programming, Nine Gold, said: "These awards reiterate our commitment to re-define the television viewing experience, providing our viewers with three hours of the best prime time quality Hindi entertainment every night of the week."

The Zee Network, which had initially been quite cool to making a bid for slots on national broadcaster Doordarshan‘s Metro Channel, now says it is interested in making a pitch but only for the 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM slot.

HFCL-Nine Gold, which suffered a setback when national broadcaster Doordarshan threw open bidding for prime time slots on its DD Metro channel, was non-committal when queried how it would respond to Zee‘s move. A senior official would only say they were keeping a track of the developments and would declare their intentions at the appropriate time.

Partho Sinha, senior vice-president (marketing) for Zee Network said: "After due assessment, we are definitely interested in bidding." It may be recalled that Zee Network CEO RK Singh, while not ruling out making a pitch when bidding was initially opened, appeared to indicate that there was little likelihood of this happening.

Late last month Prasar Bharati (Broadcasting Corporation of India) had invited bids for the prime time band of 7:00 to 10:00 PM and for the 10:00 PM to 00:30 am slot on DD Metro for a period of three years. Dividing the time band into one-hour slots, it laid the floor price of Rs 225 million, RS 325 million, RS 425 million and RS 175 million for the four hourly slots between 7:00 PM to 11:00 PM

Prasar Bharti said the pre-qualification bids would be opened on 18 June and financial bids the next day and that bidders would be allowed to be present at the time of opening of both bids.

Nine Golds‘ rights to the 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM slot comes to an end in September while rights to the 9:00 PM to 10:00 PM slot ceases in October. Last year it had bought up the prime time band on DD Metro for RS 1210 million.