Innovation is the need of the hour for the Indian media and entertainment sector. That was the big picture emerging from The Big Picture Summit, organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and the ministry of information and broadcasting on Friday and Saturday.

The focus of the event was pushing an industry that witnessing a degree of growth to the global level. Inaugurated by minister for information and broadcasting Manish Tewari, the event had eminent speakers such as Uday Shankar, CEO, Star India, Supriya Sahu, joint secretary in the ministry, Ronnie Screwvala, MD, Walt Disney India, and Sanjay Gupta, COO, Star India. Tewari also released the CII-PWC Media and Entertainment report at the event.

On Friday the summit focused on three main aspects: the government’s role in facilitating the industry to reach the desired goal, the innovations that will be needed for the industry that prepares to tackle the challenge of emerging technologies, and the need for deregulisation for an industry that may be suffocating under the various guidelines.  

The future
Currently the media and entertainment industry is growing at 20%. And despite the economic slowdown, the industry is predicted to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 18%.

As per the PWC figures, the contribution of the print and the television will get competition from the new media. The report adds that although both the television and print mediums will dominate the industry by contributing 14% and 22% to the gross revenue, that dominance will change by 2017, with 20% of the revenue coming from internet access.

“At a time when iconic print institutions around the world are shutting shop, the Indian print industry continues to grow at a very robust rate, with a compound annual rate of 10%. By 2017, it would be the sixth largest print market in the world. And so therefore, there is a lot of juice in the oranges and apples,” Tewari said.

Yet the growth rate alone will not push the industry to the goal. The industry is going through a phase of evolution, as it faces the challenge of emerging technologies. With the entrance of social media, the idea of ' content'  itself has changed. And with this phase of evolution, the industry has to introduce certain innovations, in order to keep the growth on track.

Innovations
One of the innovations that the government wants to try and implement is to provide broadcasting content through the National Optical Fibre Network (a network of cables that will help connect 2,50, 000 gram panchayats via broadband). Supriya Sahu said the government had asked the MSOs to tap into this network.     

Another innovation that is needed today is in policy making. While industry experts complained that the moment they attempt to take an initiative, the government policy making creates a hindrance.

However, the idea of innovation is still not in sync with the government. Agreeing to the point, Sahu admitted, “Innovation is very much there, but are our policies robust enough to accommodate it? I think that is the point we are talking about. From the government side I would like to say that policies are not able to keep pace with the changing technology. Because policy making is extremely cumbersome. There is a huge procedure that is followed. “The pace of policy making is slow and that is the main problem. Due to this reason, innovation per se in media becomes difficult. What happens is that by the time the policy is framed the technology has moved ahead,” adds Sahu.

However, innovation is an essential element in the continuous growth rate. Said Uday Shankar, “No renewal can happen, either in our economy or in our industry, if we are not brazenly open to new ideas.”

Amit Khanna, past chairman of CII National Committee on Media and Entertainment, added that in order to achieve the leap from 18% to 20-25%, the focus has to be on innovation; it has to be on an attempt to change the mindsets and the execution.

Yet as the discussion moves to the need of innovation, Tewari cautioned against haste. “Before we set out to innovate, we would be very well served to remember the caution which was administered by another great man of his time, Winston Churchill. And I quote, 'We must beware of needless innovation, especially when it is guided by logic.'" The minister cautioned that in the illusion of growth and grandeur, we must not forget the “vision of moderation.”

In a bid to move forward, there is a need to look at the biggest challenges that attacks the industry today. The two key challenges that the media industry faces are regulation and price control.

Challenges
The issue of regulation came up numerous times during the two-day event, from both sides of the divide. While one side believes that the ministry’s constant interference is possibly stifling the industry, there is another view that the Indian media is under-regulated.

Uday Shankar spoke about the dangers of the “tyranny of the minority” and about the face-off in litigation because a small minority is often offended by the content of some show. He added that state governments and sometimes non-state actors can flip the stage. “The Dirty Picture” is an example, wherein the name itself was seen as offensive.

He explained “Successive governments have created a web of policies and regulations which, while they may have had the honourable intent of protecting the consumer, has had exactly the opposite effect.” The question then arises about the regulation -- what to regulate, how to regulate and who should regulate? He clarified that he was not against the very idea of regulation, but a consensus should be reached on the matter.

The minister also dealt with the conundrum of 'freedom of expression' -- a big concern in media today. Calling the relationship between the government and the media, “an essay of persuasion” rather than in regulation, he added, “I think the freedom of expression should be compelled but with reasonable restrictions that were rightly put in place by the founding fathers of the Indian constitution. This is something that we seriously need to introspect about."

Price control has been an issue that has been a thorn in the minds of the industry owners. The idea of capping content so that it can be uniformly priced has been an idea that the industry is slowly rejecting. Shankar added that the policy of price control had led to restrictions on consumer choice. “No policy has done more damage to this industry than that of price controls on television content. Ironically a regime that was brought to protect the consumer has ended up doing the most damage to the consumer choice,” he said.