The uplink-downlink puzzle

The new policy for satellite television channels is a move in the right direction. But for a sector facing existential questions, it doesn't mean much

In 1984, a US-based non-governmental organisation approached the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (MIB) in India. The idea? A family-planning message couched as entertainment in a TV show. In Catholic Mexico, where direct family planning messages could not be used, a similar experiment had helped push down birth rates. Since population growth was a huge concern in India, the idea found favour. That is how India’s first soap opera, Hum Log, began airing. In entertainment starved India (then) Hum Log was a huge hit. More than 80 per cent of the country’s 3.6 million television sets tuned in to it every week. The message got across.

Ever since the evolution of TV (and films) in India, social messaging has been intrinsic to storytelling. Bhanwar, Kagaar, Shanti, Koshish, Satyamev Jayate, the list of shows that pushed the social envelope is long. Even Kahani Ghar Ghar Kii and Ektaa Kapoor’s other shows did their bit in helping women assert their rights, as studies in rural India found a decade later. From female infanticide to domestic violence, from realising your dreams to doing the right thing, TV shows in India have given hope and aspiration to millions of Indians over the 38 years since Hum Log.

Social messaging is already being served as a tasty dish. Why then does the state want to make a medicine out of it? That is what item 35 in the amended policy guidelines for uplinking and downlinking of satellite television channels in India, released by the MIB last week, does. It states that a broadcaster who uplinks a channel from India and then downlinks it for broadcast here “may undertake public service broadcasting for a minimum period of 30 minutes in a day on themes of national interest and social relevance.” It uses the famous “airwaves are public property” judgment of the Supreme Court in 1995 as justification. But that judgment simply established the public trust doctrine, says Abhinav Shrivastava, partner, LawNK. “It (the public trust doctrine) recasts the state as a trustee of public resources, and directs the State functionary to be transparent in dealing with public resources. To use it to justify a continuing obligation on private enterprises who acquire the good is stretching the doctrine,” says he. The doctrine is enunciated in several Supreme Court judgments, including those on forest conservation and spectrum. 

Item 35 is, arguably, the only major point of contention in a policy that is being seen as a step forward since the last uplink/downlink guidelines in 2011. It removes the distinction between news and non-news channels, does away with approval for every live event (say a cricket match) and opens up broadcasting further by allowing limited liability partnerships. 

There is, however, scepticism within the industry. For instance, while applications have to be made online, the process is not online end-to-end. India’s desire to be a teleport hub for uplinking channels, a la Singapore, has been discussed for over 20 years now. This policy takes it several steps forward by easing permissions. However, it insists on Indian board control and trademark registration here. For foreign companies that may simply want to come here and uplink channels to other countries, it does not offer the plug and play option that Singapore does.

That explains why only 22 channels use India as an uplink hub, against a reported few thousand from Singapore. According to MIB data, over 772 channels are uplinked out of India. But these are for downlink and broadcast within the country. The 22 channels refer to those uplinked from here for other markets only.

These, however, are the usual pulls and pressures of policymaking. The business will lobby, the regulator will mull over it and things will move, albeit slowly. With any luck, the procedural stuff should get sorted going forward. This brings it to the main point of the column. Why bother?

The policy addresses technologies that are on the wane and a business that is increasingly under pressure. The migration of viewers at the top end to pay OTT and at the bottom end to free-to-air television and free OTT has meant the decline of television on older distribution formats like cable/DTH even as it rises online. Going by Broadcast Audience Research Council data in 2021, there are about 878 million viewers in 193 million TV homes in India. Over the last three years, the state-owned free DTH service DD Freedish is estimated to have gone from 25 to 50 million homes. That is over 200 million viewers. YouTube has risen from about 285 million unique visitors (viewers) in 2019 to over 485 million earlier this year, according to Comscore data. The biggest loser is cable, down from over 100 million homes (420 million viewers) to an estimated 70 million homes (294 million viewers).

Almost half of what is watched on OTT is produced and aired first on channels such as Zee TV or Colors. Some of the largest OTT brands in India are owned by broadcasters. Even on short video apps, it is clips of TV shows and news that dominate. As a place to watch video, TV is very well-placed. At Rs 72,000 crore in revenues (ad plus pay) it still brings in the biggest chunk (45 per cent) of India’s Rs 1.6 trillion media and entertainment business.

The pandemic put pressure on ad revenues. And for the last decade, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India’s (Trai’s) obsession with channel pricing has put pressure on pay revenues. To this, add a third more potent factor. The combination of the internet, streaming, devices and technology has given birth to a new set of larger competitors.

 Google (which also owns YouTube), Meta (Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram), Amazon and Netflix among others are several times the entire Indian media business in revenue size. And a sizeable portion of their business is video. Google and Meta take away roughly 70 per cent all digital advertising. The Trai chairman talked about concentration of media ownership in India at a Confederation of Indian Industry event this week. The issue is exactly opposite — there isn’t enough scale and size to take on the tech-media companies.

That explains the spate of mergers and acquisitions — Disney-Star, Zee-Sony and PVR-Inox. MIB’s policy is a move in the right direction. But for a sector facing existential questions it doesn’t mean much. 

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