I was among the millions of happy cricket fans when it was announced that the Sri Lanka’s Bangladesh cricket tour was going to be telecasted live on Channel Eye for the simple reason that Channel Eye has clearer signals than Carlton Sports Network (CSN.) In addition to that, we were not happy about the unusual circumstances that resulted CSN grabbing live cricket from Channel Eye in an unethical manner.
But after the conclusion of the Bangladesh tour of Sri Lanka I feel that live cricket telecasting be better off without Channel Eye. Channel Eye disturbed the viewers throughout the Test series with hourly Tamil news updates that resulted viewers missing even very important milestones during the games.
Things got worse with the start of the one day series. (I cannot comment about the T20 series as I could not watch it.) During the ODI series, Channel Eye stopped live telecast for almost 15 minutes for 7pm Tamil news telecast. This is very unfair to the cricket fans. We expect an uninterrupted coverage. Channel Eye doesn’t have an ethical right to disconnect the live coverage for something else. If they cannot provide uninterrupted coverage, they should have let some other channel to buy the telecasting rights in the first place. Or they could have easily transferred newscasts to their sister channels Rupavahini or NTV without interrupting live cricket. But this did not happen.
CSN also brings us full repeat telecasts the next day for those who missed the live matches. But Channel Eye restricts matches only to nightly highlights. CSN finds enough advertisements to run even during repeat telecasting bringing profits to the channel. Channel Eye, being a channel that runs with the taxpayer money, cannot find enough advertisements even for live Test matches. This shows sheer inefficiency of the state channel.
So, like many others now, I prefer CSN to telecast live cricket matches that Sri Lanka take part even with not-so-good signals. At least they provide uninterrupted live coverage. Channel Eye does not understand priorities so they should not be given live international cricket that Sri Lanka feature anymore.
Nanda Wanninayaka 