HiTV Faults ACON’s Claims, Stresses Position

Hi Media, owners of HiTV have said in a press statement released by Justin Akpovi-Esade, the company’s public relations manager, that there was no time members of the Association of Cable TV Owners of Nigeria (ACON) were willing to pay for it’s content with the intention of rebroadcasting it.
This position is contrary to the claims recently in the media that members of the association were willing to pay HiTV to redistribute its content especially the Barclays Premier League.
The association recently sued HiTV for alleged monopoly of English premiership league righst, a suit Charles Ebuebu, the company’s head of Legal and Content Acquisition, described as not only “frivolous, but reeks of malicious intent.”
Ebuebu stated: “The association brought a frivolous case against HiTV further to a petition (by HiTV) on piracy written to the NCC and NBC against some of its members such as CTL and Metrodigital. Solicitors to HiTV have filed a preliminary objection stating that the court does not have jurisdiction and there is no course of action raised in the matter.”
According to Ebuebu, Hi Media considers it offensive for anybody to allege that it was maintaining a monopoly on the English Premier League right. ACON had asked the courts to declare that satellite television companies should license programmes, especially the English premiership matches to other cable TV companies if they were ready to pay the fees.
“It is entirely false that HiTV is maintaining a monopoly and/or tyranny. From inception, we offered the re-broadcast rights to all broadcasters in the country, but they refused to accept the terms of engagement, which terms were equally passed to us from the head licensor. Also, they preferred to continue with the piracy of content that they have been engaged in all the while due to its negligible cost. It was only Multimesh who paid for a year but also engaged in piracy, which caused the relationship to be severed. We are always ready to offer the rights to other broadcasters but they are not ready to comply with the necessary conditions.”
 “HiTV, when it got the rights has remained the only company willing to do business with others, a certain company had this same right for over a decade and never wanted to do business with anybody, yet none of these people went to court. If CTL and others are sincere, they should bring the letters of proposal written to them, offering them the rights on simple condition of bringing a letter of bank guarantee and a proper business model which HiTV had before the rights were given to it. So, where did we go wrong here? Instead, they chose to pirate our content flagrantly and the case is still with the Nigerian Copyright Commission.”
“Ironically, the case is being spearheaded by a leading member of the association, CTL, which seeks to, according to the members, reposition the operations of cable television industry in Nigeria. CTL is one of the biggest Pay TV broadcasters in the country, yet engage in the piracy of the HiTV sporting content as well as other channels meant for transmission only in the Middle East and North Africa. HiTV has written a petition to the NBC and NCC on the illegal activities of CTL and has further to that, filed a civil suit at the Federal High Court on the matter.”
 “As stated previously, Multimesh Communications have been granted the rights previously and have been provided a draft agreement for the current season. The terms of the carriage of the HiTV soccer rights have being made to CTL as well as all members of ASCON, with the monetary obligations reviewed downwards at a subsequent meeting, but all of them have remained adamant in the infringement of these rights. We are ready to provide documentary evidence of the fact that these rights were previously granted to CTL and ASCON members,” Ebuebu stated.
“It is false to say some broadcasters went under due to lack of sporting programmes, but rather due to their business model which was defective. Nearly all of them especially CTL operates a business plan based on piracy and would always resort to frivolous claims to blind the general public as to its true intentions,” he added.