Government Aims For Level Paying Field Across All Media

The Information and Broadcasting Ministry (I&B) aims to bring all the sectors within the media and entertainment (M&E) industry be it print, television, radio, films and digital media—under one governance umbrella, which will allow a level playing field said Amit Khare, Secretary, I&B ministry.

On FICCI FRAMES 2020 via video conferencing, Khare said that the government wishes to facilitate all the sectors under one single regulatory regime.
“There is definitely a need for a level playing field amongst the different media, but the level playing field will not mean that we bring everybody under a very heavy regulatory structure. In fact, during the last six years of the present government, the entire focus has been on ease of doing business and on having less but more effective regulation,” said Khare. He also said that the government is serious about bringing digital news aggregators under the FDI purview, which is similar to print media. Khare continuing his statement added, “Twenty-six percent FDI should be applicable to the print media as well as digital platforms,”

“The entire last six years of the government focused on ease of doing business and having less but more effective regulation,” he said, adding that the idea is to bring in few regulations, which would be easy to implement and that would bring in the desired results. The I&B ministry is currently working on amending many of its existing rules and Acts, such as the uplinking and downlinking guidelines on satellite TV channels, and the PRB (Press and Registration of Books) Act. “Although The DPIIT has already taken views of the Ministry on the issue, there are some clarifications that we are waiting for,” an official said.

Clarifications in regard to how the rules will apply to aggregators, like Inshorts and Dailyhunt, which are basically operating as apps and websites that receive their content from other publishers, and to online news publishing sites will be clarified then.

Khare pointed out that the regulatory regimes developed earlier had been specific to each platform in India. While print media has a separate regulation under the Press Council of India (PCI), the All India Radio and FM industry are governed by a separate set of rules. An example of it is, FM radio is not permitted to carry news other than that of AIR. Regulations for TV have also been developed on a different path altogether with no pre-censorship but a self-regulation system in place. Citing another example, he said, whereas films require prior certification, the OTT platforms didn’t.

“For five different media – print, radio, television, films and the OTT platforms – four of them are governed by different types of regulatory practices, some are self-regulated, some are pre-regulated or post-regulated, and one of them is unregulated,” Khare said. However, the convergence of content delivery has resulted in a situation where traditional regulations don’t work. “We have developed this concept of having ‘a light but tight regulation’ instead of having 200 rules or clauses,” said Khare. “The different regulatory structures need to be brought in sync with each other, not to impose more regulation, but rather to liberate them with less but more fine-tuned and easy to implement regulations,” he added.

On bestowing M&E sector infrastructure status, Khare said that the I&B ministry is in full support of the proposal and even the Ministry of Finance is on board except for some definitions that they need more clarity on. “The Minister of Finance wants to know what exactly is the infrastructure. Perhaps a small group of our ministry and FICCI broadcasts committee could sit together and work on the definitions. The proposal has already been supported by our Ministry, finance ministry, and the Niti Ayog,” Khare added further.

As technology disrupts business models, regulations have to keep pace with the changing tech landscape. “There is always a gap between regulations and technology. We have seen the Singapore model, where they have one structure that provides a ‘no go’ area. If you are not in the no go area, everything is ok. You don’t have to bring the regulation every time the technology changes. That is an open idea, but still at the idea stage,” Khare said.