The Hindu : Independent regulator for broadcasting needed

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Jun 06, 2003

Opinion

Opinion - News Analysis

Independent regulator for broadcasting needed

By N. Bhaskara Rao

Too much has been written and talked about the Conditional Access Systems (CAS) over the last couple of weeks and it will continue to be debated for the next one month too. It may not be an exaggeration to say that such an amount of discussion, involving the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister and leaders of ruling parties and Parliament itself has not gone into where it is needed the most — a National Communication Policy, including constituting a regulatory mechanism for broadcasting. Eight years ago, the Supreme Court had suggested an independent regulator and the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting had assured the Delhi High Court to do so more than once.

Despite proliferation of mass media in the country in the recent years, the percentage of unreached people has hardly declined. Thirty to forty per cent of people continue to be outside the reach of any of the mass media. India has been talking of DTH (direct to home) for a decade now. In the last couple of years we should have seen a breakthrough in the rural coverage. The percentage of TV households in the rural areas is hardly one-third of the urban. Rural teledensity is hardly two per cent (against 10 per cent in the urban areas). It is several times more in China.

The reach could have been increased three times by connecting television, Cable TV more specifically, (could get connected) with telephony. Recently, there were more than a dozen experiments across the country in this regard. But nothing serious has come out or perhaps is waiting for a commercial proposition and a marketing package.

Take the Broadcast Bill. Five years had gone in vain despite a Supreme Court judgment and a wide range of deliberations. We could not come up with any policy. To most, a media or broadcast policy means FDIs or CAS. Then came the Convergence Bill as if to bail out Broadcast Bill. It is three years since the Bill is nowhere in sight.

Radio Network

Over the last decade, there has been certain stagnation with respect to the most cost-effective medium of radio. Take FM, All India Radio first introduced FM in 1977 and did nothing to maximise the potential of FM in the next 20 years. And, in 1993, time slots were auctioned to private parties but were withdrawn abruptly in 1998 when those slots became popular. The way the licences for FM radio were decided is another example. Neither of the private FM channel would help expand the listernership beyond the present level. All India Radio is still the best bet for reaching a much larger population particularly rural and in an interactive mode. But FM radio, with all its potential, is being viewed more as a revenue source. Thus, the potential radio was sidelined with television becoming the darling.

Cable TV

The next opportunity to adopt most appropriate communication model for India was provided by enterprising individuals. Despite risks, cable TV operators went about connecting households and in no time they did far more in setting up a widely dispersed communication capabilities with lot more potential than being availed — all in a mater of a decade. They adopted and upgraded their infrastructure both in terms of reaching more television households and also delivering more channels with lot more options and all that at lowest price-possible anywhere in the world. Cable TV communication model is most appropriate to India's unique socio-economic challenges.

It is decentralised community specific, most affordable, upgradeable on technology and least scope for media monopoly from outside the community. All that was needed was some discipline in the operations, better customer service and origination of local programmes, which some cable TV operators did take up on their own by way of news and announcements.However, in the last couple of year's cable TV operations have come to a standstill with no new investments into nor any upgradation because of the uncertainty of government policies and tactics of Multi System Operators.

As a result, penetration of cable TV into rural India has received a setback. As long as there was no government intervention, cable TV expanded and had taken roots across remote corners of the country. Whose interest is the government trying to service now? Why should it meddle with the CAS with implications of destabilising cable TV? If the CAS is advantageous, it will be taken to by TV households the same way they had gone for the cable.Why should the government make it an obligatory and fix a deadline and create a controversy? Why should it fix the numbers of channels or even go about fixing charges. If cable TV operators are under-reporting their subscriber base, there are other ways of validating the same; if quality of cable TV is not up to the mark, their technology requires to be streamlined; if the ground level tyranny from operators is becoming unbearable, there should be ways to tackle it as was demonstrated by subscribers themselves in a couple of instances.

Ills in cable TV operations need to be corrected and if CAS helps that process, it should be available in the market.

But how could the government promote a proprietary-technology for the set top box?

If it is bent upon having CAS, the best way would have been by demonstrating it on a pilot scale.

There is no evidence that CAS enhances channel choice that cable TV households (with family members of varied interests) have today nor it helps improve the transmission quality and it is unlikely that subscription is going to be any lower.

CAS facilitates and formalises pay TV regime in the country the beneficiaries of which are primarily foreign TV channels and ensures communication divide in the country — between those who have access to pay TV and those who do not.

And yet the Government wants to force CAS and insists on June 15 deadline. Instead of enforcing the provisions in the cable TV Act and discipline cable TV operations, why does it want CAS as a mandatory?

CAS was meant to allow government's remote control of television channels as more and more of them are becoming news channels. For CAS enables the Government certain opportunity to dictate channels in the free-to-air and facilitate those in the pay TV.

If CAS is going to strengthen that process and help expand cable TV beyond, by all means it should be made available and left to market forces, not hurried through as if it is to do more with political deadlines or compulsions.

It is time the Government institute an independent regulator for broadcasting first and leave the modalities to do with CAS and DTH to it.

The Government should be concerned more about larger national issues to do with bridging the communication divide in the country.

(The writer is founder-chairman of Centre for Media Studies.)

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