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India Faces a Challenge of Deregulating Television
***Indeed, the Gulf war made CNN a household name in metropolitan India with Us unregulated neighbourhood cable networks clandestinely pulling down signals from the sky. The same thing is happening now with the Star TV signal coming down over much of northern India on a trial basis from AsiaSat —. Of greater concern than CNN and Star TV is the challenge posed by Pakistani programmes which may well be bounced off AsiaSat causing audiences to tune out India’s own Doordarshan.***
N ec-r
festo Is snort. awoet and simple, yet n has given rise Io no end of confusion and speculation.
The manifesto promises : 'Hitherto, broadcasting and telecasting has remained the monopoly of the government. Technological advances have made obsolete the validity of any claim to ouch a monopoly The Congress will offer to pub he corporations, which conform to parameters to be laid down by law. broadcasting and telecasting rights. Such corporations will be allowed to func Uon in competition with Prasar Bharati," the proposed autonomous agency to lake over the governments existing radio and television facilities.
The paragraph, neatly typed out, adorns the desk of Information and Broadcasting Minister. ^jit Kumar Panja. 56 whose job it Is to translate It Into action within one year. Panja has embarked on his job with zeal, but is at the moment looking for Ideas more than candidates for running private channels. Although a dozen major players have shown an Interest, the task of privatising the airwaves is a complex and daunting one which will test the resolve and ingenuity of politicians and professionals alike.
If India opens up to private television. It will be the single most significant break from the closed door society and economy of the past. And this at the hands of a party whose former Prime Minister, Rajtv Gandhi, long clung to the view that India was ’not ready" for private television. The change came during Gandhi's months out of government. In 1990 he began to tell reporters what the rest of the world had learned long since, that with satellite television a reality and global round-the-clock broadcasting reaching India, there was no longer any question of a monopoly on broadcasting, and that if the government-owned network was not to lose Its audiences, it would have to reform and compete. And what better way of competing than with home-grown private channels rather than Imports
beamed tn from the skies
Indeed, the Gulf war In January made CNN a household name In •metropolitan India with Its unregulated neighbourhood cable networks clandestinely pulling down signals from the sky The same-thing is happening now with the Star TV signal coming down over much of northern India on a trial basis from AsiaSat "Global television Is here, and India had better respond to it — fast," says one candidate for privatized tele vision
Of greater concern than CNN and Star TV. with their limited-appeal English language programmes. Is the challenge posed by Pakistani programmes which may well be bounced off AsiaSat over northern India tn Urdu, a language which Hindi speakers can understand, causing audiences to tune out India s own Doordarshan
The Congress party has gone much further than any promises of the past, which were limited to granting the government-owned network some form of autonomy along the BBC or Australian patterns. Twice before, once tn 1977 and then in 1989. when non-Congress governments took charge the public were promised an autonomous television network. Political interference. red tape and bureaucratic regulations combined to provide an indifferent and lifeless" fare most of the time, driving audiences to seek diversity tn unregulated, piracy-based primitive cable networks or the video magazine. Industry
Needless to say, on neither
of the past two occasions did the governments concerned live up to their promisee. Speaking immediately after The 1989 ek-ction, Janata Dal External Affairs Minister said, "Wc have to give Doordarshan autonomy before our arteries harden" Implying that tn 1977 too much time was wasted in discussion and procrastination Unfortunately, the Janata Dal government's arteries hardened faster than anticipated, and the move was lost in the labyrinths of the bureaucracy.
Now the urbane Panja. who
was called to the bar 1n 1959 from Lincolns Inn In London, has his task cut out. Hts first job is to cut Doordarshan (and Its broadcasting cousin. All India Radio) loose from its government umbilical chord There are plenty of draft bills already written up. and the
matter has been discussed threadbare in Parliament The transition Is feasible but not painless Old methods of functioning will have to change, control will have to pass to professionals and an indepen deni authority who will have to convert a rambling, overstaffed and undermottvated outfit into a leaner, efficient and goal oriented unit.
But the additional course of privatization is unlikely to run smooth The existing television network has an Investment of over 25,000 million rupees.
The data Is Impressive It has 500 plus transmitters beaming programmes to three quarters of India s population in more than a dozen languages on a complex pattern of local, regional and national telecasts through the day Yet. commercially it Is a non starter, heavily
subsidized by the government.
With India’s total advertising spending no more than about 12,000 million rupees last year, there to fate chance of a private national channel being economically viable — at least not until per capita income rises to the point where advertising spending multiplies four or five times
Couple that with the absence till very recently of a mobile market for producers, artistes and creative television talent, and severe foreign exchange constraints on the
Import of equipment, and you have a recipe for Inaction
One way out being considered is time sharing on the national network by private production companies who have blossomed in the last five years since Doordarshan began to buy programmes from out side. But this obviously docs not amount to competition.
Another to to think of leasing out or selling the second or local channels which already exist in Bombay, Delhi. Madras and Calcutta in addition to offering second chan nets In another 12 to 15 cities to private pai-Jes, letting them compete with Doordarshan With limited, relatively high-Income audiences to focus on. such channels may will be profitable tough they may well divert revenue presently going to Doordarshan
Loud thinking In the concerned ministry suggests that the government would not let private broadcasters have for elgn exchange, since there 1s none to spare, but would allow the import of equipment If non-resident Indians decided
to use their resources to finance such channels The idea has a precedent : asa-reMdent Indians are permitted to bring in aircraft to set up what are described as 'str taxis' but are essentially the small beginnings of private airlines in a Mg dottonated by state-owned Indian Airlines
Side by side the Congress government is pushing ahead with writing up regulations for the burgeoning cable television market. Cable owners flout copyright laws with impunity, pull down and distribute sig nals they aren't authorised to. and break municipal regulations (which prohibit them from crossing the street, for example) without hesitation.
The head of the Telecommunications ministry, which handles cable. Sam Pltroda atom, "We recognize that cable to here to stay and we want to regulate tt. not discourage it" A series of studies hare been undertaken and rules are being framed. Pltroda. who holds several patents, owns a multimillion dollar telecommunications business in the US and returned to India six years X inspired by Rajiv Gandhi's
as no modernization, expects the new regulation, expects the new regukationa to be in force before the end of this year
Along with the available satellites over India, this will open up dimensions hitherto unknown in television tn India. Lured by the prospect of big markets and expanded reach, several key new* organizations are gearing up for the challenge of privatization and cable. The newly formed Observer group of the Ambanis, the Times of India group, the Hindustan Times group, the India Today group, the Business India group and the Press Trust of India are among those who have made or are considering concrete options The television bust ness threatens to become big enough to dwarf our newspa-per business," says one leading contender.
By arrangement with the Executive, Hong Kong