Tamil Producers council to sue Sun TV for Rs 2000 crore

Meher Khanna - Televisionpoint.com Team
The Tamil Film Producers Council has decided to take the Sun TV network to court on charges of creating losses to Tamil film producers amounting to several crores. They are going to sue the TV network for Rs 2000 crore, which they claim is compensation for the losses incurred.

Talking about the need to take such drastic action, producer Kayaar said, "A few days ago, when the producers and distributors of films slated for a Pongal release complained to us about how their collections were affected because of the constant airing of film clips and songs on television channels, we issued certain guidelines and measures to the satellite media. However, only the Sun TV Network refused to adhere to our guidelines and they continued to misuse the telecast rights given to the Indian channels, by airing the clips in foreign countries and south east Asia, which resulted in losses in overseas collections. Because of this, the members of the council are very upset with the Sun Network. We have decided to follow through with whatever decision is taken by the council."

Anbalaya Prabhakaran, vice president and A.L. Azhagappan, secretary of the council jointly read out the decision taken by the 200-odd members at the end of the day's meeting.

"For the past 12 years, the Sun TV Network has been airing our trailers, songs and clippings on various programmes in all their four channels, ie, Sun TV, K TV, Sun Music, Suriyan FM free of cost. This has resulted in a loss of about Rs 2000 crore to the producers, distributors, exhibitors and the FEFSI." They added the television network bought the Indian satellite rights, but played songs and trailers in the U.S., Australia, Ceylon, Singapore, Malaysia, etc., which is a clear violation of the agreement.

Keeping this in mind, they arrived at a figure of Rs 2000 crore which will be a compensation for the four abovementioned bodies of the Tamil film industry.

From today onwards, no films (other than those for which Sun TV has bought the satellite rights), will be aired on the channels. The council also specified that if they violate this, Sun TV will have to pay the council a daily compensation of Rs 50 lakh. Another sore point was a programme titled Thirai Vimarsanam (a film review programme) where films clips were shown along with review, and they claimed that the channel didn't have satellite rights for this either, and the programme on a whole caused immense losses to the produceRs

They added that K TV allowed cable TV operators to download songs and clippings which is illegal. When asked about what measures would be taken against the producers of four recently released films who gave the TV channel clips to air, in clear violation of the council's dictates, producer V. Shekar, the treasurer of the council said that a show cause notice has already been issued to those producers asking for a proper explanation.

"We will even cancel their membership if needed and no cooperation would be given to those producers from any of the unions," he added.

Read Also:
TV channels in turmoil over TV producers ban | 01, February, 2006
No film clips on channels from Feb 1 in Chennai | 30, January, 2006
Tamil Film Producers Council meets for media rights | 10, January,2006