The home minister has threatened to crush it and so have various political parties - in public or private. The ministry of information and broadcasting finds inventive ways of meddling in the business instead of doing its job.
This, then, is the time for a few home truths.
- The Indian M&E business is not the Indian television business. It includes print, online, films, radio, outdoor and a host of other activities. Television accounts for roughly half the total M&E industry in value and has the largest reach after mobile phones, but it still competes intensely with other media. For some reason, policymakers are fixated on television when they refer to media.
- News media is not just TV channels. It includes online brands, state-controlled radio stations, thousands of apps and aggregators who operate across devices, social media and, most importantly, print. Incidentally, print is financially healthier and growing faster than television. So, if the home minister wants to truly crush the media he can start with the Marathi papers in his home state and work across the country flattening Tamil, Telugu, Bangla and Hindi newspapers. They are very profitable and are among the most read newspapers in the world.
- And if it is news television that truly irritates the powers-that-be then they are wasting their time. News television gets eight per cent of total time spent by Indians on television and 10 per cent of the total ad spend on TV. These figures have been depressingly stagnant for ages. General entertainment, on the other hand, gets over half of all time and money spent on television. So, gunning for entertainment channels will truly crush the electronic media - because that is where its money comes from.
- English news, in spite of everything that Arnab Goswami does, gets not even 0.1 per cent of the total viewing time on television. Among the top 10 news channels in India in 2013, nine are Hindi, one is Telugu. Not a single English news channel has featured in the top 10 over the past three years.
- Much of this data comes from TAM Media Research, a firm that is struggling to comply with new guidelines on ratings agencies. There are lots of problems with TAM's sampling and methodology. But the ministry's detailed interest in ratings is amazing given the really pressing issues in the M&E industry. For instance, the whole policy for auctioning over 839 stations in phase three of the radio auctions was cleared by the Cabinet two years ago. For some unfathomable reason, it has not been auctioned. There is now a scramble to put together something to ensure that scores of radio stations, due for licence renewal in April 2015, don't go off air. This is pretty "crushing" for the radio business that could have been a showcase for free media, with the ability to deliver information and entertainment to 99 per cent of India.
Some of the angst among policymakers (read politicians) centres on criticism of their parties, members or ideas by the news media. That is normal in any democracy. But it also emanates from the appallingly shoddy quality of discourse in the Indian news media. This is happening because of the quality of ownership - everyone and his uncle owns a news channel. These instruments of favour and fear, with no shareholders or investors to whom to answer, compete with professional news media, which is just doing its job. More than 135 news channels, about one-third owned by random firms or people, are trying to fill 24 hours each in a chaotic democracy. This creates a race to the bottom on standards.
The whole issue, then, boils down to media ownership and what it is doing to the quality of discussion in this country. That, it would seem, is the issue on which the attention of the home minister or his compatriots in the ministry of information and broadcasting should be fixed.
The best way to crush "bad news" would be to allow free, open and transparent ownership of news media. This could happen if a new pre-condition to owning any news brand, becomes mandatory.
Any company in the news business - in print, TV, online, or in any other media - should declare on its website all details of its funding - by bodies, the people behind those bodies and the people behind those people. Total transparency on where the money is coming from, who is funding a news outlet's losses and so on should be made mandatory. Irrespective of whether the holding company or body is listed, is a public body or not, the website should update quarterly details of its earnings, expenses and other financials.
This forced transparency alone will create accountability. If not, it would at least deter the random real-estate guys and regional politicians from jumping in. And that, in turn, will reduce the hyper-competition, raise the level of debate and divert the home minister's attention to more "pressing" matters.