LAHORE- The Prime Television Entertainment, which bought the air time of the Pakistan Television (PTV’s) channel-III, commonly known as the STN, has delayed taking it over by 15 days, forcing the viewers to live with repeat productions of the PTV.

“The Prime TV will now take over the channel from September 15 on trial basis and may take another week or so for regularizing its production,” says Mr. Jabbar of the Prime TV.

“Taking over a channel for seven days a week is not an easy task for any private party and the PTV was informed about the delay well in time. The delay has been caused by some administrative hiccups,” he said.

The Prime TV has purchased four out of seven days of airtime with two more companies sharing the rest of three days. The Pakistan Television stopped productions for its channel in the last week of August and now it is forced to air old programmes for another fortnight.

“The Prime TV has delayed taking over for a second time,” says a PTV official. Originally, it was to take over the channel on Aug 15 but delayed it until Sept 1. It has shown its inability to do so for another 15 days,” he said.

The Prime TV has been buying time on programme-by-programme basis. However, it insisted on purchasing full four days saying that it was facing difficulty in selling limited time. Now it has not been able to take over, he said.

On reasons for selling the channel, he denied that advertisement drainage to satellite channels forced the PTV to take the decision. The satellite channels, like Zee TV, were attracting advertisements because of their dirt-cheap rates. They were charging as low as Rs 20,000 per minute whereas the PTV sold the time for Rs100,000 to Rs150,000.

Satellite channels viewership was hardly around three to five per cent of population, whereas PTV’s was 90 to 95 per cent. Only those advertisers were opting for satellite that wanted to convey their message to those five per cent. The PTV was not affected by it at all, he said.

Source: Dawn
Date:9/4/2001