Tuesday, May 15, 2007

MTV/MBC issues notice to public

"Please be informed that our channels are not available on any satellite cable or pay services. Sirasa TV, Shakthi TV, Channel One MTV are only available on Free to Air terrestrial TV via your regular TV antenna"

The above notice appeared on The Daily Mirror today 15th May 2007. At the moment the only pay services carrying the above channels were LBN and all Multivision operated cable television services. The only two wireless pay services Comet Cable and Dialog TV do not carry the above channels. According to comments received recently on the LBN Blog, the above channels have been taken off air on LBN.

MTV/MBC which as reported by us earlier does not believe that pay television will be successful in this country. It should be said that subscribers of these pay services are able to receive these local channels much clearer than they would if they used their regular television antenna's. Making these channels available on pay services will enable these channels to maintain their viewers and with this move it is guaranteed that Sirasa, Shakthi and Channel One will lose viewers from among the several thousands of subscribers of pay television services and Channel One MTV will stand to lose more due to bad reception in most parts of the island. It is yet to be seen whether Sirasa will be taken off air on Dialog GSM Mobile TV.

We hope that the management of MTV/MBC will change their attitude towards pay television services in this country and work together with them to provide their viewers with a more pleasurable viewing experience.

16 comments:

Anonymous said...

it doesnt make business sense to loose so many customers.if ts FTA whats the fuss if it reach a wider audience. other than sirasa all the other channels have poor picture reception other than city limits of colombo and Kandy.already advertisers have realised this but management of these channels cannot see the inevitable truth.

actually they should be happy other providers are carrying their signal for free to a wider audience. they might be innovative with new things in media but not in technological sense of the word.

Mario said...

another attempt by the so-called big guns of television to try and conquer the tv industry in Sri Lanka.

They dont want their channels to be available on pay tv channels but they are asking people to pay to watch their channels online.( www.webtv.lk) What rubbish!

Anonymous said...

Their may lots of good reasons that MBC to make that business decision. But way we think is in a different aspect.

Viewing Shakthi tv & sun tv no different at all
Sirasa most of the popular programmers were on star package.
They claimed news first 24 x 7 but that’s the tag line carried by NDTV.

Watching the channels should be decided by the viewers. MBC should allow the customers to choose the channels, rather then talking crab.

Anonymous said...

PLS READ VERY IMPORTANT

Im a contestant of Sirasa Kumari ya. I sent my application for Sirasa Kumari ya,because I wanted to find out what these people are really going to do with this. Now I have been selected for the 4th round which consist of 60 girls. Today we had dancing practices for final day event of Sirasa Kumari ya and Im sending this to you just after arriving home.

Have you seen what they shown in this Sirasa Kumari ya program during weekdays on Sirasa TV???Most of the times the camera is focused into girls' legs and breast area. They created the interest in participants/ girls' mind to wear short skirts and now they are showing them on the TV. Im really dissapointed about this and I still participate for this contest as I want to tell the truth to my country.

Do you know when they took us to Hotel Amaya Hills in Kandy ,how Sirasa staff behaved??? Nadeeka Fernando ,who was Miss Sri Lanka also with us to teach us how to walk,smile and behave. Do you know she gave a lip kiss to another girl in front of all of us ???Do you endorse this??Is this the behaviour they are trying to teach us?????The Maharaja staff who were with us were wearing mini skirts which were very short and their panties also could be easily seen.

Sirasa says that they are doing a great service to the country by organizing this event.Do you know that all 80 girls had to sign for a contract to not to contribute our appearance for any other institute for a period of one year.

During our stay @ Amaya Hills they have organized a DJ night.Do you see any relation between selecting a winner and a DJ night???

Is your mother or wife gives you the dinner as she did it few years back, if she is watching Ran Depeya( Maha Gedara,Wasuuda, Praveena. ...).In my experience I know,my mother wont do it as she did it earlier. What messages are they trying to give by these 3rd class indian dramas??? To hate/revenge your wife/husband/ son/daughter? ???When you watch these programms,your small childres also used to watch them.Note how their behavour changing bywatching these.

Can you remember how Sirasa created a wrong image about our Air force when they attacked a LTTE training school???
Have you noticed that most of the times when Sirasa present their news,they say Mr to LTTE members,but not to our President.
Have you seen the events organized by their radio channel Y FM??Most of the times they include half naked girls ( Eg- Beach party which held @ Negombo few weeks back)


Dear Sri Lankans...Dont be fools...Now they are trying to suck your money again by introducing a SMS campaign for Sirasa Kumari ya.It was Rs 10/= without VAT when they introducedit for Sirasa Super Star.This time it is going to be Rs 5/= without VAT.

>From Sirasa Super Star they have earned in Millions.Maharaja has given 20% from this to LTTE. How much you have contributed? ???
Are you going to vote this time also??? Do you want to giv this country to LTTE???

Sirasa gave us a hot line for Sirasa Kumari ya inquaries.This was given only to us.Pls show your objection by calling to this number 0115 620015 and dont let these people to destroy our young generation who will be responsible people in future.

The final is to be held on 18th May and SMS campaign starts today( 24/04/2007 ).Initially they are going to select 20 girls for the final round from this 60 girls.

Pls dont vote...Dont contribute your money to LTTE by sending SMS to this.

Dont let these Sirasa people to destroy our culture,nation. ...

Stop watching Sirasa TV...

Lets protect our motherland.. .

We love Sri Lanka ....

If you are a real Sri Lankan pass this msg to all your friends and help to save our country...when you send this pls copy it to lets.savesrilanka@ gmail.com

Anonymous said...

Who wants to watch sirasa?I hear they are promoting homosexuality through the number one ponsiya in this country(The ponsiya who comes in the MOBITEL advertisment).

With these advertisments it has become a fact that non of the people with a personality is buying Mobitel connections because they dont want to go to the level of this ponsiya and no wonder Dialog market is growing after the ponsi ads of Mobitel.

I dont know what does SIRASA and MOBITEL think by having a cockless arshole like this in their advertismets,No wonder they are third class.

Anonymous said...

anon must be talking about this mihiranga guy,i totaly agree as he cannot sing or talk properly and the ponnayas found in dikmens road have a peronality than this mihiranga guy,when i see him i realy feel wormiteesh

Anonymous said...

Well it must be illegal to broadcast MBC channels on pay tv without their consent.

It does make good business sense not to allow this. Maharaja would want to get into pay tv at some point, probably if and when Ranil comes into power. MBC channels are the most popular in Sri Lanka, so any pay TV network that broadcasts these channels is likely get more subscribers. This is not good for the said long term strategy. This may actually reduce MBC's viewership in the short term (esp for Shakthi and MTV) as well, because viewers would then have access to a multitude of English, Tamil and Hindi channels at a click of a button. Thirdly, MBC pays a shit load of money to buy rights to telecast foreign programs, so why should they allow someone else to profit from it for free. So yeah, I think Maharaja is right not to allow this unless they could get the pay tv operators to compensate for their losses.

Mario said...

They must 1st expand their coverage ( especially Channel 1 MTV ) 1st of all before they think of pay tv and all that other nonsense. They can afford not to come on pay tv if they had good coverage and if they had quality programes. But do they ? I dont think so.

Anonymous said...

As per bardo, MBC channels are the most popular in Sri Lanka.

IS IT TRUE? I DON'T THINK SO

Mario said...

from my contacts in the ad agencies,
i recieve the ratings for tv and radio every quarter.
In the last quarter SWARANAVAHINI was the most popular TV channel, and there were ads in the papers about this as well. The most popular english tv channel i beleive was ETV.

SHREE has been the most popular radio station for some time now, and SUN was the no 1 english channel for the last 3 quarters or so.

Anonymous said...

I disagree with bardo with almost all of his arguments. First of all MBC channels are NOT the most popular channels in Sri Lanka. Secondly even if MBC is planning to launch a PAY TV Service and they will still have to air their channels free as well (due to the fact that a large population in this country will not be able to afford a cable service). Thirdly, it's hard to imagine that cable tv operators are using this as a sales point (absolute rubbish).

As for me I will not be rushing off to install a tv antenna and will turn to other local channels for the news (as for me that's all that's worth watching on MTV/SIRASA)

Anonymous said...

Maybe MTV/MBC do not want the audience of their terrestrial channels fragmented by making the channels available FTA. If the terrestrial audience sizes are small, then they will not be able to charge high rates for advertisements.
A friend at an ad agency tells me that the Research Company that does the programme ratings (which incidentally is another Maharajah Company) can only capture the viewing habits of terrestrial TV audiences and not Satellite / Cable TV audiences.

Mario said...

Channel 1 MTV is gonna show the ABU DHABI one day series... Jus goes to show that they are so greedy to the rights to events like this, they will spend anything to get the rights. Why couldnt they allows some other channel which can been seen islandwide to obtain the rights, like Channel Eye ?, and why on earth cant they show the match on sirasa instead of that lousy channel 1 ? When they launched the channel they said it was gonna be a channel dedicated to ONLY ENGLISH ENTERTAINMENT and now they are showing football and cricket matches on it too...

Looks like some big shots have really got their wires crossed!!

Anonymous said...

I just cannot agree with AMD on this If any other channel wants to get the rights they just have to BID higher you cant blame MTV for getting the coverage rights for a TV coverage. DUH! it is a TV station brodcasting telivision is what they do what you are saying is illogical as for showing the channel on channel 1 rather than Sirisa its their decision do you think they purposly want to reduce the number of people?(target market) watching it? as you say they have "spent anything" on tv rights so they trying to reduce their revenue by showing it to a lesser amount of people?
You are also angry that they show live sports events (FA cup) which were hithero confined only to Pay TV viewers?

What you are saying just dosn't make sense going on what you write i think you have a personal problem with MBC. you'd better take it up with MBC on a personal level. dont abuse this forum.

Anonymous said...

anon 3.01

what the previous guy is saying is that they should have shown it on sirasa in order for more of their audience to view it instead of select few within city limits of kandy and colombo as national team is involved.

if we can have something like what indians have where nimbus was forced to share feed with doordarshan for free.what u call that? national interest over business interest?

Anonymous said...

Anon 3.01 is absolutely correct in stating that the rights for a specific TV coverage goes to the highest bidder.
MBC's decision to show the Cricket on MTV Ch1 is clearly aimed at building audiences for this channel. You can bet that there will be an enormous number of Trailers of MTV programmes shown during the telecast of the matches.