By L. K. Hewlett
“We were required by Law to block those channels,” said William Ewing, General Manager of The Cable. “We were presented with a cease and desist order regarding the broadcasting of World Cup Soccer.”
On Wednesday citizens bombarded local radio stations with complaints that ESPN2 and ABC, the cable channels carrying the soccer matches live, had been ‘blocked out.’ Subscribers were outraged at not being able to see the games live, with some even threatening to sue the Cable company.
The angry persons said they felt it was unfair and somehow in violations of their rights since they were paying for those cable channels.
Another concern raised was the fact that ZIZ was broadcasting cricket during the day, which meant the soccer matches would have been aired in the evening, after the matches had ended.
Many persons complained that matches shown on ZIZ were ‘dark’ and barely visible and the picture quality was extremely poor.
Ewing said that ZIZ had produced the order to immediately stop broadcasting the World Cup Soccer.
The order stated that ZIZ had bought the rights to broadcast the soccer matches from Federation of International Football Association (FIFA) for an undisclosed sum of money.
He made it clear that The Cable had offered an alternative solution to ZIZ who, at that time, had declined the offer.
Ewing said The Cable had offered to take the feed ZIZ was receiving and broadcast the soccer matches on one of the stations that it was being shown on before.
Ewing said the equipment was already set up and it would have taken 5 minutes to complete. That way, subscribers would have been able to see the matches live with the ZIZ logos and commercials.
By late afternoon however, one of the channels that was previously blocked was back on the air, showing the World Cup Soccer matches.
ZIZ issued a press release later the same day stating that an agreement had been reached between them and The Cable. According to the release, ZIZ had acquired the rights to broadcast the 2006 FIFA World Cup Soccer matches.
“The rights had been purchased at a substantial cost from the International Media Content (IMC). All Cable operators in the Caribbean were advised by IMC of its broadcast rights and that ABC, ESPN and ESPN 2 did not have the right to broadcast live or delayed, any of the matches in St. Kitts or the Caribbean,” the release stated.
“The networks were advised that any feed of World Cup Soccer to the Caribbean must be blocked so as not to infringe upon the rights of IMC or any other corporation who had acquired the rights to air the matches. Despite the advice of the IMC, The Cable chose to broadcast the soccer matches, which was in violation of the rights of FIFA, IMC and ZIZ.
“The IMC subsequently advised The Cable that they were in breach of the broadcasting rights of the Caribbean Football Union, ZIZ, and FIFA and that they were to block the channels broadcasting the matches, failing which, injunctive action would be sought.”
Under the agreement reached with The Cable, ZIZ would carry live soccer matches on Channel 5 when there was no cricket. The Cable would make available to ZIZ one of the previously blocked channels to enable ZIZ to broadcast World Cup Soccer. It was agreed that channel 42 would be used and would become a ZIZ channel for the period of each match.
This would technically allow for ZIZ to broadcast both cricket and World Cup soccer simultaneously.
