It is the end of the year and of a decade of covering the Indian media and entertainment (M&E) industry. It seemed appropriate to make a wish list. Here is mine for this crazy $17-billion business that I enjoy being part of. I wish that:
1) Politicians and their relatives would be banned from owning media companies. This is the biggest bane of this industry. Many news channels owned by politicians are tools of influence rather than a business. In cable, the biggest reason for pay revenue leakages is that roughly half the cable operations in India are owned by politicians. These become a source of cash for elections and a means to arm twist channels.
2) India gets a really aggressive, proactive ministry of information and broadcasting and a media regulator. For over five years now, we have been in a regulatory time warp. It is a business that the government micromanages (e.g. cable pricing) or does not touch (e.g. cable licensing). The equivalent of an English Ofcom or the American FCC would go a long way in fostering growth.
3) The industry would get its act together on metrics. In films, radio and outdoor, robust metrics are proving to be a roadblock to growth. The impact of good metrics cannot be overemphasised. Globally most media segments have grown two to three times once robust metrics come into place.
4) Media owners get their act together on lobbying. Considering the kind of influence and power that media companies have over people’s minds, they have surprisingly little control over their own fate. Most industry associations, of which there are too many, are pathetic at lobbying. In TV for instance, all data show conclusively that cable prices have actually come down over 20 years. Yet the industry has hardly ever used this to battle price regulation.
5) Editors of English language newspapers would get over their obsession with V S Naipaul. Every time he says or writes something, editors of most large English language papers in India go over the top. The op-ed pages are full of him. Maybe someone should tell them, gently, that Naipaul means nothing to an entire generation of us Indians.
6) Journalists are made to do crash courses in understanding the media business. Most journalists are appallingly ill-informed about the realities of their own companies, newspapers or news channels. In fact, most new journalists should undergo training in how to research stories, write neutrally and not to moralise without knowing facts. What ails journalism can easily be fixed by good training.
7) Media owners wouldn’t be so touchy. Most of them, especially publishers, have the thinnest skins in the business. It comes from years of being treated like oracles by the public and the government alike. In a super competitive free market, it is a feudal attitude that simply doesn’t work.
8) A really big M&A deal happens in media. What if Sun and Sony merge to create the biggest national broadcasting powerhouse? Or Hathway, Den and Sumangali merge to create the biggest cable company in India with a truly national presence? It would get a great valuation, push digitisation and open up the whole pay revenue pie in television.
9) Newspaper owners would hurry up and start investing in new media. They have the luxury of time before the Net hits them. But if metro readership numbers are anything to go by, it won’t last long. Considering they are making record profits, why aren’t they more aggressive about experimenting with business models on the Net, the mobile or other devices?
10) Newspapers, magazines, TV channels and websites analyse the M&E industry seriously. The few brands that have a “cover it like any other industry” approach to media and entertainment are Business Standard, Mint, Forbes and Businessworld. Most of the others either keep away from contentious issues or don’t name rivals, or have several riders on their M&E coverage. Having good business coverage of an industry is an important element of the ecosystem within which it grows. Telecom, IT, FMCG, bio-tech all gained from it, why not media and entertainment?
