Over the last few days it has been noted that Star Channels have been restricting to programming to Sri Lanka citing territorial rights as an excuse. When it started on Star World Premiere HD with the blocking of "The Blacklist" it was assumed that this was due to AXN Asia also carrying the same programme. However this has now spread to "Sleepy Hollow" on Star World (and probably Star World Premiere) & "The Goldbergs" on Star World Premiere, not forgetting to mention "The Guardian" on Fox Crime. It should noted that these programmes are not available on the Asian feeds of channels on Dialog TV.
It looks certain that Star India is not interested in acquiring rights for Sri Lanka. This started with the pull out of Star Movies citing territorial rights.
Dialog TV should take immediate steps to rectify the issue, like we suggested some time back, lets kick Star India out of Sri Lanka for good. Dialog should approach Fox International channels and do the following replacements
- Bring in Fox Movies Premium SD & HD to compensate for the loss of Star Movies.
- Replace Star World India with Star World Asia.
- Replace Fox Crime India with Fox Channel Asia.
Already the Hindi channels on Star on Dialog TV are the Asian versions so it's best to extend this to the English channels as well.
Very soon at this rate Star Sports will stop acquiring rights for Sri Lanka when it comes to sporting events then it's time to move to Fox/Star Sports Asia.
Either Star India is not happy about Asian feeds being available to Sri Lanka or they have suddenly employed someone who doesn't like Sri Lanka. Anyway this maybe a blessing in disguise with the ability to break free of Indian feeds altogether.
The question is, what will Star do on their channels which may be available on the Indian operated competitor to Dialog TV who will enter the market soon. Most likely the same or give them an unfair advantage.
It's time to start a campaign #kickStarIndiaoutofSriLanka
