Media needs to introspect on self-regulation models: Varma

NEW DELHI: Ministry of Information and Broadcasting Secretary Uday Kumar Varma feels that the Indian media industry needs to introspect on the current models of self-regulation while emphasising that the government had no intention of placing any controls on the freedom of the press.

Giving a keynote address at the News Television Summit organised by Indiantelevision.com, Varma stressed that India was the only country in the world without a statutory regulatory authority.

While stressing that the government had no intention of imposing any statutory regulation on the media, Varma stated that media must do some introspection on its own ?sooner than later?.

Referring to digitisation, he said, the introduction of digital addressable systems (Das) was the largest single initiative taken by the country for the past few years.

Das will bring transparency and will necessarily force a paradigm shift with television channels working on newer revenue models, apart from working out on new content for the consumers, Varma said.

He also claimed that in the first phase of Das, both Delhi and Mumbai had gone digital de jure and de facto, while Kolkata had gone digital de jure. In Chennai, complete digitisation eluded the government because of a stay order from the Madras High Court.

He was confident that the TV channels along with the consumer will see the benefits of digitisation in the near future, but said state governments will also have to play a role in helping multi-system operators.

News television channels, he was confident, will become more sustainable and purposeful with digitisation as it will help in developing new revenue.

On the phase II of DAS, he said that 28 of the thirty-eight cities had already achieved over 50 per cent digitisation and four were fully digitised.

He said another major game-changer will be the auction of 839 FM radio channels in Phase III, cleared by the Empowered Group of Ministers recently.

Answering a question about permitting news on community and FM Radio, Varma said that the government is only restricting political news because it was difficult to monitor the large number of radio channels in the country.

However, the government had already decided to permit the FM channels to take all India radio news bulletins and this may be extended to community radio as well.

"We are just being prudent at present, but we are not ruling out permitting news bulletins in the future," he said.

He also said that India was working towards becoming a digital teleport hub and the government was taking steps to facilitate this transformation.

Indiantelevision.com Group CEO and Editor-in-Chief Anil Wanvari in his opening note lauded the decision to go digital but said the industry is struggling against various odds. He also said that ad regulation by Trai will only add to the woes of the television industry which has not been witnessing robust growth in the last few years.