The Hindu : Live cricket commentary on Rajdhanis?

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Feb 09, 2003

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National

Live cricket commentary on Rajdhanis?

By Anita Joshua

NEW DELHI FEB. 8. Should the Railways take up the All-India Radio's offer, cricket-lovers travelling on the Rajdhani and the Shatabdi trains will be able to hear World Cup cricket commentary live, without disturbance which is part and parcel of catching the broadcast on pocket transistors while on track.

Eager to cash in on the cricket fever, AIR has offered to provide the live commentary of the major matches on Shatabdis and Rajdhanis as they already have an in-built public address system.

However, as of Saturday afternoon, the Railways had not responded to the offer.

The AIR offer was made by the Prasar Bharati Chief Executive Officer, K. S. Sarma, to the Railway Board Chairman, I.I.M.S. Rana, on Thursday.

According to the proposal, AIR will air the commentary live on the 35 Rajdhanis and 28 Shatabdis so that the passengers do not miss out on the action while on board.

The Railways can opt for airing only the India matches or go in for the larger package of 27 major matches for which AIR has the broadcasting rights. Though time is fast running out — even if the Railways opts for the former, which comes into effect on February 12 when India plays its first match — the AIR officials maintained that the necessary equipment for live broadcast could be installed at short notice.

"Since these trains already have a public address system through which recorded music is provided to passengers, all we have to do is fit an antenna on every train to uplink to the Worldspace satellite.

``This takes just about two hours, and the sound will be crystal clear,'' a Prasar Bharati official said.

In all likelihood, the transmission will be provided on FM-II using Worldspace — a satellite platform for Direct To Home radio broadcast which AIR has been using for some time to beam its programmes in Africa and the Asia-Pacific region.

As for the feasibility of the project, AIR officials say test runs with live news had been conducted successfully on the Thiruvananthapuram Rajdhani several times since August last, as part of a proposal to provide "breaking news'' to passengers.

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