Being minister for information and broadcasting of a 'weak' government isn't easy. Even party colleagues regularly taunted Ambika Soni, the immediate past minister, of being too nice (read, too weak) whenever the news channels went hammer and tongs after the government.

As the licensor to these channels, Ambika's ministry had powers to haul the channels through an inter-ministerial committee (IMC) mandated to punish and censure if a complaint was found to be genuine. But Ambika relied on 'self governance' that TV channels claimed to have created. Result? The  IMC  became virtually redundant; and depending on who the  complaints were against, Ambika's babus made her ministry a post office for the News Broadcasters Association Standards Authority (NBSA under Justice JS Verma) or the Broadcast Consumers Complaints Council (BCCC under Justice AP Shah).

What the two judges did — or didn't — with a complaint became the licensor's verdict by default. A ministry's babu went over the BCCC in a case of serious violation by a comedy channel just once, and hell broke loose. Justice Shah threatened to quit; Ambika balked, promising never to intercede with 'self regulation.'

This isn't to argue that the present minister isn't a champion of self-regulation by the 800-plus channels licensed by his ministry. As a lawyer by training, Manish Tewari is in no mood to be caught on the wrong side of the licensing conditions and rules of the game. It's just that he's a little mean and, perhaps, a little sick of his government being ill-treated by the rookies delegated to run news channels. So all he's done is to stoke a suo motu discussion paper by TRAI that has been in the works for a year. (Please read: http://www.trai.gov.in/WriteReaddata/ConsultationPaper/Document/cp-aproved-Authority.pdf).

Shorn of niceties, the paper is a riot act on TV channels. It cites a heady mix of consumer interest, extant provisions of which all licensees of news and entertainment television licenses are ab initio signatories, and comparable provisions in several countries, to reiterate the 12-minute rule.

The paper assumes menacing propositions against pay channels (as opposed to the free-to-air folks) arguing that they deserve to place only 6 minutes of adverts per hour. Other curbs are proposed for broadcasters airing films and those telecasting sports. Curbs are also proposed on news channels, perhaps the unstated targets of the entire regulation, for never covering more than 10 percent of their screens with crawlies.

As a consumer, most of us would immediately endorse all ideas in the TRAI paper (the actual notification is so far limited only to a blanket enforcement of the 12-minute rule). More so, when we see data being cited that one monitored news channel got away slamming 47.4 per cent of prime time (7 pm to 11 pm) on us by way of ads!

But the story isn't that simple. If news channels, or for that matter all other channels, are parched for ads, many of them will fold up. Those who are free-to-air have no other source of revenue, and they depend, among others, on advertising that Tewari's Directorate of Audio Visual Publicity (DAVP)  selectively sprays among them.

Even DAVP rates have been rolled back!

As for channels that are on 'pay' mode, the industry's notorious culture of 'under declaration' by last-mile operators gets them a fraction of what their real revenues ought to be. So TRAI's diktat — no doubt under the benign approval of Tewari —is a bit of a death knell.

On Thursday, Tewari talked of a 'modes vivendi' between TRAI and the broadcasters. Actually, TRAI — under Rahul Khullar, the silent assassin  here — has already done its job. It is now for the IMC to step in to enforce the reiteration. If 'notices' citing violation of licensing rules are indeed slammed, they'll come through the IMC, not TRAI.

Of course, the jury is out on whether IMC notices will indeed be slapped, and if they are whether they will be selective. Also, whether the broadcasters can invoke NBSA and BCCC citing arm-twisting by the licensor arguing that they're basically being told by the Tewari-Khullar combine to 'behave or else…'

Some would have it that this is the return of the 'ancien regime' and at stake in all this is the fundamental constitutional safeguard available to the media. Others say the television industry — particularly the news folks — brought it upon everyone else and their 'rights' can't be confused with avarice of media owners who telecast 47.4 per cent of prime time by way of adverts.

A more nuanced solution would require large-scale improvement in yields, so that the same amount of advertising money can be made in 12 minutes. But that required replacing present content with a quantum leap in quality; which, given the state of creative status quo, is the most unlikely of all scenarios.

All said, one must credit Tewari for thinking through what his predecessors, political 'dadas' like Ambika Soni, Anand Sharma, PR Das Munshi, and those before them, didn't.