Cable operators stop broadcasting foreign channels

Bangladeshi cable operators suspended the airing of foreign television channels that do not provide ad-free broadcast or clean feed from Friday.

The move came a day after Information and Broadcasting Minister Hasan Mahmud announced to operate mobile courts to ensure clean feed broadcast.

“The concerned channel downlink distributors and cable operators will be responsible if they don’t follow the law and will face actions,” he said on Thursday.

Cable operators said the ad-free broadcast of foreign television channels is not possible.

“The foreign channels don’t want to provide clean feed. It’s not that broadcasting these channels is profiting us directly. So, we stopped their broadcast following the ministry’s directive,” Cable Operators Association of Bangladesh President SM Anwar Parvez told The Business Post on Friday.

On Thursday, Minister Hasan said that legal action would be taken if cable operators violated the law by displaying advertisements or programmes or breached the rules prescribed for broadcasting on cable lines through a tripartite meeting of the ministry, the Television Owners Association, and the cable operators.

He also said that in case of any other violation of the law, the distributors and cable operators allowed to downlink the channel would be held liable for violating the law.

Hasan said no one can run foreign TV channels without clean feed in India, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Pakistan.

The minister said that tough actions would be taken for operating unapproved TV through video streaming on the internet, screening illegal films and advertisements through cable networks and running cable networks without a licence.