YSR Congress party president and Andhra Pradesh chief minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy seems to have followed the route shown by his Telangana counterpart K Chandrasekhar Rao in tightening the screws around two “yellow media” channels which have spitting venom on his government.
Since Thursday evening, there has been a blackout of two Telugu television news channels – ABN-Andhra Jyothy and TV5 across all cable television networks in Krishna and Guntur districts, if not the entire state.
The channels, however, were available on satellite digital network like Tata Sky, Airtel, Dish TV etc.
Both the channels are known for their pro-Telugu Desam Party and ant-Jagan stand and for the last few days, they have been stepping up attack on the YSRC government in the state.
Particularly, during the recent Chalo Atmakur episode, these channels have given a completely one sided version.
It is learnt there were oral instructions from the government to the Multiple System Operators (MSOs), who control the cable television networks, to black out these two channels.
For now, the blackout is confined to Krishna and Guntur districts.
It may be mentioned that soon after the formation of Telangana state and the TRS came to power in Telangana, KCR took a similar decision to stop telecast of TV9 and ABN-Andhra Jyothy across the state on the ground that both these channels were telecasting anti-Telangana programmes and running down the Telangana government.
While TV9 compromised with the government within a few months and got the telecast restored, ABN-Andhra Jyothy suffered for more than a year, before falling in line.
However, a lot of changes have taken place in the last five years with regard to channel telecast, as Television Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) came up with a new policy and all the MSOs and satellite network groups have to follow it.
Within hours of the Jagan government indirectly issued instructions to blackout the two channels, ABN-Andhra Jyothy came up with a statement asking its customers to lodge a complaint with the nodal officer of TRAI, if they don’t get the channel.
It argued that as per the latest policy of TRAI, a consumer should have access to as many as 75 free-to-air channels free of cost. ABN-Andhra Jyothy said it is a free-to-air channel and as such, nobody can block it from being viewed.
“If any of our customers are not getting this channel on the network, they can demand the local cable operator to restore it and if he does not do it within 72 hours, they could lodge a complaint with the nodal officer,” it said.
