Mounting dues and rate rancour — cable conflict is back and the viewer, as always, is caught in the middle. The Zee-Turner bouquet of channels — including Alpha Bangla, Zee TV, Zee MGM, Zee Cinema, CNBC and, most importantly, Cartoon Network — went off air on Wednesday afternoon in nearly eight lakh households across the city and suburbs.

Zee-Turner switched off the beam on the network of the largest city multi-system operator (MSO) RPG Netcom around 3 pm, alleging outstanding of “over Rs 7 crore”. This immediately cast a cloud over the STAR and Sony beams — RPG Netcom’s trump cards as city distributors of the two — on rival MSO SitiCable, a Zee company.

Zee also claimed that cheques deposited by RPG Netcom for Rs 1.7 crore had bounced. “We have been holding talks with RPG Network for a long time in the hope of settling the issue amicably,” said Siddharth Jain, COO, Zee-Turner. “Being leaders in their business, we expected them to have a fair sense of business and honour their commitments,” he continued.

RPG Netcom, however, insisted there was no outstanding, except that of the valid payment credit period of three months. “We are ready to open our books to anybody,” said CEO Amit Nag. He claimed the post-dated cheques had been issued on condition that they would be banked with mutual consent. “But Zee-Turner went ahead and presented them, so we had to ask the bank to stop payment,” Nag added.

But the “real issue”, Nag continued, was that Zee-Turner sells its bouquet to SitiCable at Rs 41, whereas it’s sold to RPG Netcom at Rs 55, a claim Zee-Turner rubbished. “This unfair business practice must stop,” Nag said. RPG Netcom would urge other MSOs to switch off the Zee-Turner bouquet to show solidarity.

As RPG Netcom households resigned themselves to life without Scooby Doo, Ek Akasher Niche and the rest, SitiCable homes braced for a STAR switch-off in an RPG Netcom retaliatory move. At the core of the conflict is Calcutta Communication (a unit of SitiCable). “They have not yet provided us with the subscriber listing report and are sheltering operators and also have dues to the tune of Rs 56 lakh,” Nag said, warning of a STAR-Sony blackout.