Broadcast industry seeks clarity from government on amended guidelines for TV channels

India's broadcast industry will soon have to comply with a slew of new regulations which have been cleared by the Cabinet.

The Information & Broadcasting (I&B) Ministry insists that some of the new guidelines on uplinking and downlinking signals — like a five-year validity of news licences instead of the current one year — are aimed at making permissions and operations easier for companies.

But there are a few guidelines that are giving broadcasters heartburn. One of these is the requirement that channels — news, sports, or general entertainment — air public service content for at least 30 minutes a day. The guidelines specify eight themes for these broadcasts, which include health, education, agriculture and women's welfare.

Karan Taurani, Senior Vice President at Elara Capital, says, “There are lot of uncertainties here — can this be shown in phases of 5 minutes throughout the day? Does it have to be shown in morning or night? Can this be integrated into content that's already there like shows, films, etc? A lot of clarity is awaited.”

The cost of producing and airing this content is another point of confusion. Broadcasters say producing such content — especially if regular or existing content is not counted as eligible — will add to their overhead. They point to difficulties in monetising such content, and a weak revenue mobilisation environment as added pressure points.

Meghna Bal, Fellow at Esya Centre, says, “Such programming, will have to pay carriage fees to a distribution platform operator, there are also restriction on prices for channels. So your ability to realise revenues is constrained as there are price ceilings on channels. If there's a down market, advertisers are not spending as much, etc then that is an added economic burden.”

There is some hope that the government will step in by either subsidising the costs involved, or diverting some of the DAVP's budgets to sponsor such programming — but there is no clarity on this as yet.

The new guidelines have also left sports channels disappointed. They were expecting a waiver on the Rs 1 lakh processing fee incurred on each live telecast — but this has not been forthcoming. Sports broadcasters say this processing fee will increase cost of production by nearly Rs 5 crore per sporting event.

According to Paritosh Joshi, Principal at Provocateur Advisory, “Broadcasters have already purchased the rights to these events at a very high cost. There are also lot of profit pressures on linear TV business model. Regulators are interested in incentivising the entry of participants into the game, but this principle is dis-incentivising.”

The I&B Ministry says it will meet with stakeholders before issuing detailed guidelines... and the industry hopes it will get more clarity on numerous aspects of the new rules soon. Indications are that stakeholders may also push for rules and policies that incentivise broadcasters to produce such programming, rather than a command and control approach.