UK-based  satellite Information Services (SIS) will bag the rights for producing and broadcasting the Commonwealth Games next year for the public broadcaster Doordarshan.

         Doordarshan sources confirmed that the British group had been short listed out of the two consortiums – the other led by an Indian company – which had filed their bids when the last date (19 August) closed for this purpose, out of the five short listed earlier for production and coverage facilities in High Definition  (HDTV Sources, however, said that the matter had been referred to the Information and Broadcasting Ministry for its final decision along with some points raised by an empowered committee comprising top officials of Doordarshan and All India Radio .

       Satellite Information Services Live of the United Kingdom has formed a consortium with SIS Broadcast and Satellite Information Services Ltd. as lead partner. SIS is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Satellite Information Services      Holdings) Ltd and is owned by a combination of leisure and financial investors.              The company  has the largest satellite uplink fleet in Europe and covers 100,000 hours of live events worldwide each year, including Formula One, Wimbledon, UEFA Champions League football and European Tour Golf,  Experts estimate the winning company will charge up to $500 million (£306 million) to cover the 11-day event which opens on October 3, 2010, and which is expected to attract 8,500 competitors from 71 countries.
 
           In March National Federation of  Akashavani Doordarshan Employees ( NFADE ), unhappy at the decision of Prasar Bharati,  to seek global tenders for coverage of the Games, had threatened to go on strike and boycott coverage of the event. Under New Delhi's contract with the Commonwealth Games Federation (CGF), signed when they were awarded the event in 2003, Doordarshan,has to produce an international feed in HDTV format.. Prasar Bharati requires  total  an estimated investment of Rs 9,431 crore for full  digital transition. As against this demand, the Planning Commission had proposed only Rs 5,439 crore as gross budgetary support in the Eleventh Plan period, even though  a 4.2 per cent higher budgetary allocation in comparison to Tenth Plan period (2002-07).  This, according to experts, will not be able to meet Prasar Bharati’s requirement of converting its infrastructure from the current analog transmission to digital and HDTV formats
 

           The other short listed group was Nimbus Communications which had come in a consortium with Canadian Broadcasting Corporation as lead partner. The others who had initially filed an Expression of Interest were Big Productions in consortium with the Beijing branch of Interp ublic Marketing Services (Shanghai) Ltd. and Tokyo Broadcasting System Inc. as the lead partners; Nimbus Sports International Pte Ltd of Singapore in consortium with International Sports Broadcasting of the United States as the lead partner; and International Games Broadcast Services of Switzerland. The Commonwealth Games 2010 are scheduled to be held from October 3 to October 14 next year.