Broadcasting as a public good

The recently concluded annual e-auction for the placement of television channels on DD FreeDish, the free-to-air DTH satellite platform of the public broadcaster, saw a new benchmark being set. With the value of the slots on the platform being auctioned at more than a thousand crore rupees for the first time, the FreeDish e-auction has underscored the importance of the platform for nationwide reach to more than five crore households.

Over the years, the FreeDish DTH platform has emerged as a public good of national importance with its noteworthy role during the Covid-19 pandemic making available several educational channels 24x7 while schools and institutes of higher education remained shut. The journey of FreeDish since the early 2000s has, however, not been without several challenges. The platform that was originally envisioned by the Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led National Democratic Alliance government witnessed a significant turning point during the United Progressive Alliance era with the introduction of e-auctions for the placement of channels following a TDSAT ruling.

With auctions put on hold between 2017 and 2018, the platform saw a major revamp of its methodology with differential reserve pricing for the slots based on the genre and language of the television channels. The impact was a multifold increase in revenue from the e-auctions 2019 onwards, creating a buffer of several hundred crore rupees for the public broadcaster to fund and sustain its operations. The revised met­h­odology, however, did not have a smooth sailing with ma­jor Hindi entertainment channels preferring to stay out of the platform on more than one occasion in what would appear to be cartel-like behaviour.

The latest auction, which fetched more a thousand crore rupees in potential revenues, saw a further refinement of the methodology to insulate agai­nst likely cartelisation. The continued success of DD FreeDish owes largely to its massive inst­alled base of more than five cr­ore households, making it a mandatory platform for television channels that are free-to-air and advertising-driven. As a public good, the platform has played an important role in ensuring competitiveness with­in the broadcasting sector while creating a level playing field between well-entrenched incu­mbents and upstart challengers.

Competition within the broadcasting sector has seen several distortions lately despite the media and entertainment space witnessing tremendous disruption and innovation thanks to digital platforms and smartphones. Recent regulatory interventions seeking to fix pricing within the sector have not been helpful with continuing litigation and conflicts between the distribution platforms and the broadcaster channels. The cloud over television audience measurement has also had a negative effect on the sector, with unhealthy business practices such as placement of channels on landing pages further distorting the playing field and hurting competitiveness.

While media and entertainment in India over the past two decades has had a vibrant legacy with hundreds of television channels across genres and languages, the recent consumer shift towards over-the-top and digital has seen a counter effect with a few large platforms dominating. If the long-term trend in the telecom sector is anything to go by, the cumulative effects of regulatory actions and consolidation have seen competitiveness significantly diminish with very little consumer-centric innovation. Unlike in the broadcasting sector, where the public broadcaster has been able to play a moderating effect of levelling the playing field thus engendering competition, the telecom sector has not seen a similarly effective public role to sustain competition in the larger consumer interest.

With the increasing consumption of content over smartphones, there is a risk that vertical integration between the networks and the platforms can skew the playing field disproportionately away from content creators. The upcoming season of the Indian Premier League would be an interesting test of these various dynamics with the splitting of media rights between broadcasting and internet streaming. Whether advertising-driven free-to-air streaming would pip conventional television broadcasting remains to be seen as hard negotiations unfold between the broadcasting rights holder and distribution platforms owned by the internet rights holder. Also of interest is whether network neutrality, as commonly understood, would be preserved or if live video traffic of the matches would be prioritised over the internet and cellular networks.

Ahead of the most watched sporting event in India, it would seem that every facet of competitiveness and fair play across the broadcasting and internet streaming fields is likely to be tested if the unfolding dynamics are anything to go by. Irrespective of the final outcome, this sectoral interplay underscores the importance of broadcasting as a public good in spurring competition and in sustaining a level playing field. While FreeDish has been able to play that role with conventional television audiences, the increasing consumption of streaming content on mobile phones demands a similar role for emerging technologies such as direct-to-mobile broadcasting as a public good that levels the playing field across networks and platforms in the larger interest of the consumer. It is imperative that policy makers and the sectoral regulator do not lose sight of the continued need for competitiveness to spur business model disruption and content innovation ensuring a healthy and vibrant media and entertainment sector in India.

The author is former CEO Prasar Bharati