MUMBAI / NEW DELHI: Remember the 10 June deadline that the government had initially set for all pay channels to declare their pricing mechanisms. While the speculation now is that some announcements in this regard are expected tomorrow or the day after, one pay channel did play ball, and that too on the stipulated date.
 
 
Viacom kids' channel Nickelodeon informed the government on 10 June itself that it would be priced at Rs 3 in a post-CAS situation, Sanjeev Hiremath, vice-president, network development, South Asia, licensing and merchandising, confirmed to indiantelevision.com.

Thus Nick remains the only pay channel to have honoured the government timeline in the matter. Of course French fashion channel FTV has already announced that its "upper crust" sibling FashionX TV would be available to pay subscribers at Rs 30 post-CAS. But FashionX is not on air at present and there remains a big question mark over whether it will be available by the CAS rollout deadline of 14 July.

Queried as to the possibility of mature sibling music channel VH1 (it debuts in Asia this month) coming to India under a CAS regime, Hiremath said that a final call on that could only made after matters had settled down somewhat. Hiremath was clear on one point though. And that is that MTV would remain free to air, CAS or no CAS.