Disclaimer: I find advertisements on television irritating too. It confounds me more that all television channels, at least the ones claiming to be news channels, seem to break into ads at the same time. Bad marketing strategy, I would think, as I keep on shuffling channels in the interim. But who am I to grudge them their suicide?

The trial balloon floated by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) doesn’t deserve the paper it’s been written on. It is an accountant’s attempt to meander into rent seeking. Imagine asking all TV channels to monitor their advertisements by the hour and submit periodic disclosures, just so that some genius in the TRAI can turn the screws claiming to represent us, the Indian consumer.

If the TRAI had a modicum of interest for us, would we have had half-a-dozen call drops each time we speak to each other, especially in a moving car! How about fixing that first? And if that’s too much of an ask, at least name and shame the guilty, stating operator-wise data when a call was terminated and the consumer tried the same number within, say, the next 10 seconds: evidence that the call was terminated due to the network. This column could easily meander into short shrift to our requests for number portability on frivolous grounds. We could rave and rant about the dark alley called “Do Not Call Registry,” a no-go for ethical corporations and a bonanza for rent-seekers. But this is about how our busy-body telecom regulator wants to poke her nose into how many minutes of advertisements is good for us in one hour, 12 if you’re watching cable, and 6 if you’re on pay.

My questions to TRAI:

1) Do you have the powers? Not just in the rule book, but to implement this on the ground? Is what you seek to do, just a regulatory land grab, versus the equally inane ministry of information and broadcasting, the so-called licensor of TV channels, aimed to give content to professional complainants sitting inside the dirty-tricks departments of some channels? By the way, you also plan to ensure that the audio level of ads is the same as content! Wow!

2) What distinguishes advertisements from content, anyway? What, if in the next few months, someone complaints that such and such news channel conformed to the 12-minute cap, but embedded a plug for “Barfi” followed by another one for “Heroine.” I saw three news channels do this just last night with director Madhur Bhandarkar praising every single dimension of his work! If this wasn’t an ad, what is? That being the case, would our friendly TRAI accountant get into “content” like this too? Or will she then refer the matter to the sleepy self-regulation we’ve outsourced to Justice JS Verma? What of “advert” not between breaks? For example, an entire bouquet of news channels under the News Broadcasters Association (NBA) did pre-election ad sales [pure ads plus advertorials] via a joint mechanism? Shouldn’t the TRAI, purveyor of cable systems, largely owned by politicians, have moved in and coopted Justice Verma and the competition regulator?

3) What of music channels and filmi set-ups, or even food channels, that show nothing but embedded plugs? Will it be our TRAI accountant doing the honours, or will she, at least, refer the matter to Justice AP Shah, the regulator paid by the Indian Broadcasting Foundation (IBF) to regulate content on television channels?

4) Like most overreach, the proposed 12-minute regulation wears the mask of good intent. “We have several consumer complaints, you see! Also, this sort of cap exists in some other countries too!” Well, the simple question to the bleeding heart is: do these countries mandate prices at which channels can be sold? Thanks to TRAI, India does. And we’ve been mandating retail pricing of channels “ex-cable operator,” leaving behind an unregulated jungle of dodged taxes.

5) India is one wonderful country where sports broadcasters, who pay some serious nickels and dimes for LIVE content, have to mandatorily share their feed with the state broadcaster. Should they be handcuffed further? Should natural breaks between fall of wickets or while a new batman walks in be subject of scrutiny by a TRAI accountant?

6) Let’s also talk of competition. Does a broadcaster deserve to be told what threshold of advertising is just right for her consumer? What if someone goes beyond 12 minutes and touches, say, 16. [TRAI claims research of news channels over 4 years shows that they hog 35 percent of their prime time with adverts]. My experience in Zee News and India TV was that viewers found out immediately, and they punished this greed by deserting the channel. Rating numbers reflected the loss immediately and advertisers punished us either by opting out or demanding a reduction in rates. So, the market kicks in with greater efficiency than the TRAI might want to believe. What, by the way, was the rationale of studying only the news channels over a 4-year period beats me.

7) Then there’s predictability. TRAI’s own "Recommendations on Issues relating to Broadcasting and Distribution of TV channels" of  October 1, 2004 stated in para 8.12 of Section 8 ("Advertisement"): "Broadcasters that put sizeable amount of time on advertisement loses viewership which is detrimental for a TV channel as such loss of viewership would mean loss of revenue. This shows that the market has a means of correcting “over advertising”.” This is corroborated by a report provided by Edeilweiss Capital on Zee TelefilmsPray, what happens to teleshopping channels and push-up bras and slimming belts that take over from midnight. If the channel is willing to lose its audience, should TRAI care?

8) In a premeditated way, the TRAI consultation paper speaks of ads being an “inherent nuisance.” Is TRAI competent to say that? While I pasted a disclaimer at the very outset, I am uncomfortable that the telecom regulator in my country is to judge whether or not others in my home have the right to relish the new pizza advert for Rs 299 or dream of the new Hyundai Elantra? Even assuming that cars and pizzas are a nuisance, and the so-called social benefits of advertising is complete hocus pocus, does a TRAI accountant really have a clue that the ultimate purchase decision would have been made not just via TV ads? Marketing 101 would tell her that purchases are possible only if we have the money and the communication has succeeded in creating deeper satiation of what we perceive to be missing in our lives. Hello, that includes hoardings, print ads, mailers we get in the letter box and inside our daily newspaper, besides increasingly sophisticated relationship tools, buy-back offers, loans and insurance. Will our TRAI accountant get in there too? Incidentally, the UK regulator does, as I pointed out in a column on sexual content (Read here). They try address the entire gamut of media, including what sort of skin a bill board shows, nuanced further by distinguishing between a bill board [or magazine cover] on the high street and another one 10 metres from a school. The British regulator also steps in on what websites must be blocked before a mobile phone is sold by a local service provider. Decisions are taken via community consultations and I don’t mean written submissions alone, like we do here, created by a constituency of professional agencies like the Centre for Media Studies, the research partners to the 12-minute case.

9) Since the plan is to ban “part-screen advertisements” which in plain speak would mean scrolls, natural justice demands a ban of reciprocal nature on news flashes that accompany (and obscure or flatten) full-screen adverts. Would the TRAI accountant enforce that or else will she compute an algorithm giving credits for “part-screen advertisements” in both cases?!

10) Having blasted the IBF in their handling of the Sunny Leone – Bigg Boss case, I sympathise with their plea this time pointing the TRAI towards “tight retail rate regulation, increasing interference in wholesale rate-setting, and maintenance of “must-provide” mandates that prevent platform differentiation and unnecessarily restrain competition.” Unless the TRAI isn’t serious about the consultation paper per se or there is an outright volte face, its own submissions already stated in 2004 and then 2011 were: “Additionally the regulation of advertisement time, typically drives up subscription fees. .......... . Therefore, the advertising rates reduce subscription fees for consumers. The restriction on advertisement time would either result in increase in subscription fee or affect the variety and quality of programming.”

So, at the risk of annoying you folks at Utsarg, vide Petition No. 34(C) of 2011 in the TDSAT, against TRAI and several other broadcasters and content aggregators seeking a cap on television advertising time on the ground that these advertisements interfered with their viewership of television programmes, you aren’t speaking for me.

In fact, the way our regulators are flush with testosterone, is the day far when the registrar of newspapers demand caps on the number of ads in newspapers! This isn’t pure conjecture: there’s a notice in the sarkari files asking newspapers to restrict the number of pages they can extract from international newspapers.

(Tweets @therohitbansal)
**The proposed regime as mentioned on www.trai.gov.in:

“With regard to the regulation of advertisements in TV channels in India, the Authority proposes the following stipulations. The stakeholders are invited to offer their comments on these stipulations.

i.   The limits for the duration of the advertisements shall be regulated on a clock hour basis i.e. the prescribed limits shall be enforced on clock hour basis.

ii.  No FTA channel shall carry advertisements exceeding 12 minutes in a clock hour. For pay channels, this limit shall be 6 minutes.

iii. The 12 minutes of advertisements will not be in more than 4 sessions in one hour. In other words, there will be continuous airing of the TV show for at least 12 minutes each. Not more than three advertisement breaks shall be allowed during telecast of a movie with the minimum gap of 30 minutes between consecutive advertisement breaks.

iv. In case of sporting events being telecast live, the advertisements shall only be carried during the interruptions in the sporting action e.g. half time in football or hockey match, lunch/ drinks break in cricket matches, game/set change in case of lawn tennis etc.

v.  There shall only be full screen advertisements. Part screen advertisements will not be permitted. Drop down advertisements will also not be permitted.

vi. In so far as News and Current Affairs channels are concerned, they are allowed to run not more than two scrolls at the bottom of the screen and occupying not more than 10% of the screen space for carrying non-commercial scrolls, tickers etc.

vii. The audio level of the advertisements shall not be higher than the audio level of the programme.”