A tame James Murdoch, an aggressive Aroon Purie and a funny Shekhar Gupta — here are some quick snippets from FICCI Frames, the annual media and entertainment (M&E) industry jamboree held over three days in Mumbai last week.
1. At the FICCI Frames in March 2002, James Murdoch spoke aggressively about how Indian cable operators were “siphoning off money.” The thousand odd delegates included the then minister for information and broadcasting, Sushma Swaraj. The speech, to put it mildly, did not go down well with the Indian authorities.
So, when he was touted as a keynote speaker for Frames this year, everyone in the business was looking forward to some fireworks from the CEO of Europe and Asia for the $32.8 billion News Corporation.
James, however, was “toned down” as one observer put it. He’s just spent over ten years playing on the global media stage. Everything from dealing with the intractable Chinese market, the chaotic Indian one and the tough European one has probably forced him to change his style. He started off in 2000 as a genial, enthusiastic and intelligent man who called a spade a spade. With time he has grown into his role as “heir apparent” to the News Corp empire and become more circumspect. What a pity; the younger James, a fresh Harvard dropout was more fun.
2. Aroon Purie, however, had no qualms about stating the truth. The chairman of the India Today Group was scathing in his analysis of what ails the television broadcasting industry — a “deaf, dumb and blind” government and a short-sighted industry, which is incapable of speaking in one voice. His solution; lock all television industry CEOs in the Big Boss house and force them to come to some agreement.
3. Shekhar Gupta’s talk made every self-respecting journalist in the room cringe. The editor-in-chief of The Indian Express Group simply used his own experiences as a reporter and popular media perceptions of journalists to comment on “The changing face of Indian journalism.” While I couldn’t help laughing and nodding through the whole talk, the fact remains that journalists don’t operate in isolation. Publishers, editors and media owners are equally to blame for the joke that Indian journalism has become. Ask any journalist how they are trained or any senior editor how often they take a sabbatical to refresh their knowledge and you will get the answer.
4. All the sessions on television were uniformly boring and repetitive. My sense of déjà vu was strong. Even younger analysts, investment bankers and industry guys said the same thing — the television industry is stuck in a time warp. Sure digitisation is not delivering and price control is killing pay revenues and content innovation. But what stops the industry from juicing ad revenues better by charging on a cost-per-thousand basis?
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5. Most of the sessions and workshops on films, whether on the business, technology or even script-writing, were good. In segments such as film, animation and special effects, Frames is doing the job it is meant to. It is getting the right people involved, taking the discussion forward and translating these into papers that usually find their way into policy discussions. In fact, one observer said (rightly) that Frames is an “entertainment industry forum, not a media industry forum.” Except for the talk by Gupta, there was nothing on print, on media buying or advertising. There was one session on radio.
6. “Tell me why should I attend this?” asked the head of one foreign consulting firm pointing to the melee coming out of a session. That stumped me. For more than ten years now, I have been attending Frames. Every year I think I will give it a miss, but rarely do. This year I finally figured out the answer. The imperfections of Frames, on content, timing and the chaos on opening and closing days, is just a reflection of the stage of evolution we are at. FICCI Frames, warts and all, is what the Indian media and entertainment industry is all about. And if you want to connect with the eco-system of the Indian M&E business, it remains the only forum to do that at.