STAR TV India CEO Uday Shankar prefers some regulation over no regulation

In its 15th year, Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI)'s annual international conference on Media and Entertainment, FRAMES, kicked-off this morning at the Renaissance Hotel, Mumbai. A long introductory session spread-over into the next session, and the overlap continued into the afternoon. Manish Tiwari, the Union Minister for Information and Broadcasting, scheduled to attend, was conspicuous by his absence, and his Secretary in the Ministry, Bimal Julka, left before the third session, on Regulatory regime in the Indian broadcast industry, had ended. Actress Sonam  Kapoor, looking chic, svelte and slim, was the first to light the inaugural lamp in the morning. She, too, however, left soon afterwards, without addressing the audience.

Uday Shankar, CEO STAR TV India and Chairman of the Media and Entertainment Committee of FICCI, lamented the increasing costs of carriage fees for TV channels and recalled from his own experiences that not too long ago, a news channel like Aaj Tak (Hindi), where he served as News Director, had to pay NO carriage fees. High carriage fees make news channels un-viable, as they have to cut costs on talent and news-sourcing to meet these charges, he pointed out. On the issue of Regulatory Bottle-necks by the government, he opined that some basic regulation was better than no regulation. At present, a Trust, inspired by the BBC, called Prasar Bharati, regulates the televison and radio sectors in India. Both these sectors were government monopolies till the early 90s. He also commended the fact that the Indian media and entertainment industry grew last year by as much as 12%, in sharp contrast with the GDP of the country, which was slightly above 4%.