That there are problems with the government’s policies and regulations regarding the media and entertainment industry is not exactly news. What’s news is officials acknowledging it. And no less an officer than Dr Rahul Khullar, the chairman of Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), the industry’s regulator, has admitted to this now.

“In a sense we are driven by what is broken (problematic) now. (But) what is the problem, and how do we fix it?” he asked while addressing a panel of experts from the industry at the recently concluded two-day “The Big Picture Summit,” a joint venture of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and the information and broadcasting ministry.

Among such knotty issues discussed at the summit were DTH licences, cross-media holdings, the delay in the digitisation process and the cap on advertisement pricing and slots on TV channels.

READ ANOTHER REPORT FROM THE ‘BIG PICTURE SUMMIT’: Growing big, going global: challenges before Indian media

Talking about the “major challenges” facing the industry today, Sudhanshu Vats, Group CEO, Viacom 18 Media Pvt Ltd, said the first challenge is the need to put resources at the right place. He said: “We are not exploiting the potential of this industry. The first aspect that needs to be corrected, and rather quickly at that, is (to put) resources behind genuine innovations. In order to generate these resources, one of the fundamental pillars behind our pricing policy is completely broken – you cannot have capped pricing. There is no other sector where pricing is capped. Are you telling me (that) all cars in India are sold at one price?

“Then why should one genre of channels have a cap on pricing (of adverts, as also time for screening them)? I am saying we have to allow the market to determine what the price (ad rates) should be. And (since) technically it is a competitive market, we will do everything to get a high stake so that we find the right pricing.

According to Vats, the business model of Indian news channels also supports dependence on advertising, which is “increasingly leading to news channels losing out on their independence”.

The digitisation issue

A second issue, Vats said, is the fact that the media and entertainment industry is going through a phase where it seeking short-term solutions. He stressed on the need for a bit of “futuristic thinking” while designing policies. Taking the example of digitisation of TV channels, he said, “Digitisation is great (and) TRAI is great. (But) having said that, when you start making policies for that, I think you should have anticipated the delay (in implementing the digitisation process). It (a backup plan) should have been there.”

Stressing that such a contingency plan, to counter the eventual delay ion rolling out the digital platform, is not a difficult thing to come up with, Vats said, “All that was needed was more dialogues between the government, the industry and more participation of experts from all over the world. All policies that are getting refreshed should be refreshed a little bit more vigorously.”

While digitisation of TV channels has been welcomed by both the public and the industry as a game-changing initiative, the delay in implementing the process has added to complexities. By itself, digitisation was a solution to the “underreporting of customers for paid television”, experts said, but the pace of digitisation has come to be a problem.

Admitting to the problem, TRAI chief Khullar said, “It (digitisation) has not gone as well as we had initially expected. But by end of next week, it will be done by all purposes in Kolkata, Mumbai and Delhi. We will then take up all phase-2 cities. This part of the problem will be fixed by October-end.”
JS Mathur, additional secretary, ministry of information and broadcasting, however said that the digitisation process should be seen in a more positive light.

Self-regulation and other issues

Sunil Lulla, MD and CEO, Times Television Network, said that ambiguity in different laws, and ways to implementation them, is leading to self-regulation in the industry. “The last innovation that I think was important was the process of self-regulation, which allowed a certain code of conduct for news channels,” Lulla said. “There is a law ( that the content of channels should be regulated) but then there is nothing about (that) law – and self-regulation arises within that the framework.”

He also said it’s time the self-regulation guidelines are adopted by both the government and the law.

Mathur said: “In the last few decades, I would say since the dawn of the millennium, technology, business models, organisational setups (and) issues related to the industry have incurred a lot of churning, which is a good sign. I think whenever technologies change, ideas change, audiences change, new needs arise (and) there is a lot of trepidation at various levels as to how and what can be done. A lot of things have to be anticipated – there are a lot of things that happen with very little time to think about (them).”

Reassuring the industry, Mathur said, “The government is absolutely there with very active interaction, which I hope will increase in future. There are existing issues (and) there are issues that might crop up – there would be policies for some of them. We might not have thought of policies for many of them but I think as and when issues come up, or are expected to come up, a collaborative thought process between us (government and industry) would get us results.”

Accepting the discrepancy in government policies, Khullar said, “Events (that occurred) in the industry raced far ahead of either government policy or government regulation. And in the process, the warts are beginning to show.  As these warts are beginning to show, you have two options: you either look away and don’t look at the wart, or you deal with the wart and sort it out.”