Last week, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (I&B) tried to stop the Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) from sharing data on television ratings till it was registered. BARC, which had applied for registration in November last year, says that it had complied with all the requirements and was awaiting clearance from the Ministry of Home Affairs. “BARC has always complied with all the government stipulations and is committed to working with them,” says Partho Dasgupta, CEO, BARC. The fracas was sorted eventually and TV measurement data were released.
It has been almost a year since this ministry took charge. At a time when there are several critical issues facing not just the TV industry but films, radio and print, BARC’s registration seems like a really trivial thing to focus on.
Here is a look at what has been done or not done, by regulators and policymakers in the last year or so.
n Digitisation will release a couple of billion dollars in pay revenues, bring more taxes, choice and clean out black money from cable. After a policy push in 2011, it is 95 per cent through in the top metros and 38 towns. There are the usual fights, arguments and litigation between cable companies and operators and broadcasters. That is precisely why a tight regulatory leash needs to be put on the process. But instead of hastening digitisation, one of the first things this ministry did was push its deadline from December 2014 to December 2015. And it has stated that the thrust of digitisation will be on using indigenous set-top boxes. Much of this delays the process further and does not give India’s manufacturing sector any specific advantage, say analysts.
Why not push the process and wait for its benefits to flow back to the economy? The ~47,500-crore Indian television industry is the world’s second largest at 160 million homes. However, it is also famous for poor margins and lack of creativity. A profitable, pay-revenue supported TV industry means more jobs, more taxes, better programming and more choice for viewers.
The sub-text — more than two-thirds of the cable operators in India have political affiliations, making the industry a source of political funding and a strong lobby against any move towards transparency. And yet fresh data suggest possibilities — in areas that are already digitised and where average revenues are going up, research shows that operators are willing to share more.
n Even before this government came to power the I&B ministry has shown extraordinary interest in TV ratings. There have been three papers/reports on television ratings from the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India and the ministry in the last six years or so. In January last year, the ministry came out with a detailed set of guidelines that could have shut down TAM Media Research, the agency that offers ratings. It went to court. TAM is also going through the process of re-registration under the new guidelines while it awaits clarity on who can own it in India.
Strangely, no government seems keen on meddling with readership or box-office data with similar guidelines.
n When prime minister Narendra Modi was campaigning last year as a mere candidate, there was a big fracas on the way Doordarshan (DD) edited an interview featuring him. There were laments on the autonomy of DD. But like most other governments, this one too has done nothing to free Prasar Bharati, which runs DD, from the clutches of the government. Financially and administratively, Prasar Bharati is completely beholden to the government in power, though it is an ‘autonomous’ corporation.
If it was independently run and run well, it could create an independent not-for-profit news broadcaster out of DD News and thereby force private players to shape up a la what the BBC does in the UK. There has, however, been no move to give it the autonomy that four independent committees have recommended.
Much of this only goes to prove that media regulation in India is ad hoc and subjective. It reacts to a hot issue of the day — what happened on a news channel or the content of a film. The real issues – centralising entertainment tax, incentivising the building of broadband, digital TV and film exhibition facilities, making it easier for cable operators to offer broadband – seem like things that have never featured on any ministry’s to-do list.
Twitter: @vanitakohlik
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