Zee Turner to deny access to Hathway Datacomm for airing 33 channels

Zee Turner, TV channel distribution joint venture between the Turner Group and the Essel Group, plans to stop Hathway Datacomm from airing 33 channels for having defaulted on its payments to air them.

According to Zee Turner, the payment has been overdue for the past 10 months.

"As per the prescribed law, Hathway is to sign its agreements with Zee Turner for availing services of the 33 channels on expiry of the previous one," Zee Turner said in a statement.

Since the expiry of the agreements in March 2009, Hathway has not come forward to sign these.

Zee Turner also said that in its Red Herring prospectus filed with the regulators, Hathway had said its total subscribers were around 2 million even as it claimed a subscriber base of 8 million in its advertisements, whereas it had declared details on only about 400,000 thus concealing a substantial portion of its subscriber base.

Viewers in six cities including Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore would have to bear with suspension of access to their channels with Zee Turner's move to discontinue its bouquet of channels to Hathway Datacomm Limited, one of the largest multiple system operators (MSO) in the country.
''It's sad that we have to take the decision,'' said Dinesh Jain, CEO of Zee Turner.