|
MUMBAI: At the Frames convention for the business of
entertainment the first plenary session looked at regulation.
I&B secretary S.K. Arora notes that till five to six years
back the broadcasting sector was unregulated. Now one has the uplinking,
downlinking guidelines, DTH guidelines. However these were more
reactions and not proactive and visionary in nature. Therefore the
I&B ministry is looking at a Broadcasting Services Regulation
Bill. The aim is to provide an overacrching legislative proposition.
The goal is to have regulatory convergence for the three media industries
of film, television and radio.
He notes that the challenge is going digital. "While other countries
have set deadlines we in India are moving in that direction. Cas was
mandated and we will study the results before going further. We also
do not believe in the concept of moral policing. There have only been
three to four cases where action has been taken (such as with AXN).
The Parliament, civil society and the courts have upheld these decisions.
Self regulation is key. The government set up a committee to work
on a content code. The committee had to differentiate better between
U, U/A and A content. The committee set down guidelines to decide
what content should not be. Nine parameters of content have been looked
at including nudity and sex, religion, violence. Two factors looked
at are the subject matter treatment and audio visual presentation.
The aim is to have a set of identifiable certification norms after
which broadcasters will regulate content with their systems of content
auditing."
It has been proposed that industry bodies will be set up for television
and radio. They will function in a similar manner to the Advertising
Standards Council of India. The bodies will look at content after
receiving a complaint. If the complainant is not satisfied with
the verdict then he/she can approach the broadcast regulator. "This
is how the self regulatory mechanism will work."
He stressed the importance of media reaching the rural areas. Right
now the easy areas of urban and semi urban have been covered as
can be seen by the number of TV owning homes that exist. India has
only reached a 50 per cent penetration in this regard. The government
is looking at how different platforms like cable, DTH, IPTV can
be used to spread the reach of media across the country. He does
not want to only go the mandatory route.
He notes that the film sector is on the upswing. While the concept
of parallel cinema is on the decline there is a bottleneck in terms
of marketing and distributing films. He is optimistic about rural
cinemas with digital screens coming up. The government is overhauling
the cinematography act to facilitate this. After all 12,000 halls
in the country is extremely low. He notes that India has co-production
deals with Germany and Italy. We will sign one with the UK in May.
China, France and Brazil are among the countries are waiting for
co-production treaties with us to be finalized. He notes that India's
USP in film also lies in the areas of visual effects and animation.
Alas we have not gone global on our own steam. The co-production
treaties that have been signed will help us get more globally integrated
he says.
He notes that the upcoming Cannes Film Festival will have two India
partnership days. He says that an export promotion council should
be formed by the various film bodies in the country. After that
the government can look at how it can push our films abroad in a
more effective manner.
He notes that India is a liberal country. "We allow FDI in
advertising, content production. We have a ceiling on DTH and cable.
Unlike countries that have exclusivity for content in India we have
a must carry clause. That means that content owners should give
their channels to all platforms on a non-discriminatory basis. It
works the other way as well."
Sony CEO Kunal Dasgupta says that the must carry clause is applicable
to the popular content like Star Plus, Sony and Zee. However it
hurts the ability to bring niche channels into the country like
a Golf Channel or Court TV. There is not enough quality content
in areas like food due to the must carry clause he says. So some
flexibility is needed. He says that Indian channels have done a
good job to regulate Indian content created from within. Sometimes
though content imported from abroad has had issues due to sensibilities.
The regulator needs to see that an environment is created whereby
viewers get the
relevant content. They do not need all content. A golf channel for
instance will run a profitable business with 100,000 paying subscribers.
If however it has to provide the channel on all platforms then the
business is not viable he argues.
Ofcom deputy chairman Phillip Graf says that navigation tools are
the way to go forward in a converged environment. He gives the example
of the internet where the user can take advantage of navigation
tools to filter search results and also ensure that unsuitable content
is not displayed. The challenge is to manage a regulatory process
across different platforms. The future model of regulation will
neeed shared expectations for the public and the regulator in managing
standards. He mentioned the watershed hour of 9 pm regarding protecting
children from unsuitable content. Also in the UK the aim for broadcast
news is different from print news. That is because the UK has only
three news channels - BBC, ITV and Sky. The aim here is to ensure
impartiality. For print though there are several publications expressing
a diversity of opinions. So all viewers get expressed due to several
market players. He also says that Ofcom does not regulate content
pre-transmission.
| 
