FRAMES, FICCI’s Media & Entertainment conclave, attracts 20 countries

FRAMES is big. There is no M&E (Media and Entertainment) event in the country bigger than FRAMES. For many years now, the venue is the idyllic hotel in Mumbai’s lake-district, and the only thing wrong with the location is the distance that many attendees have to cover to get there. To those unfortunate visitors who live either at the southern end of the island or the outer suburbs in the north, it could be a two-hour journey, one-way. For those coming from other cities or other countries, this is a non-issue. Delegates include speakers, exhibitors, country partners and industry professionals. Among them are many NRI friends, who travel from the USA or Europe and meet me only at this event, year after year. Every year, there is at least one country partner, and in 2016, it was Turkey.

‘Change or Perish – The Year of Digital’ was the theme running through the conclave, which was fine, but there was no need to keep drumming it ad nauseam.  FICCI always invites a Union Minister for the inauguration, and this time it was Mr. Ravi Shankar Prasad, holding the Communications & Information Technology portfolios. He set the tone by remarking, “India’s talent combined with the power of Information Technology would act as a springboard to launch India into the big league.”

Mr. Prasad said that the Government of India recognised the importance and relevance of promoting the media and entertainment industry. Hence, visa processes were being eased for film shootings. Besides the National Centre of Excellence was coming up for the M&E industry and a new film facilitation office was also being set up. The Minister said that for government campaigns like Make in India, Skill India, Digital India and Smart Cities, ‘digital’ was the foundation. He added that to bridge the digital divide in the country, there was a need for empowering India, digitally.

Mr. Mukesh Ambani, Chairman, Reliance Industries Ltd., was also present at the inaugural and stressed that India was poised to become a $100 billion industry in the coming decade, but still ranked 150th, in access to internet and mobile. Mr. Uday Shankar, Chairman, FICCI Media & Entertainment Committee, & CEO, Star India, said that India cannot remain in a state of denial, as the world was changing, and it was time India adopted and embraced digitisation. “Power of stories will remain, and breaking away from the traditional media, the digital media was making way for new stories,” he added.  Dr. A. Didar Singh, Secretary General, FICCI, said that this year delegations from almost 20 countries were participating in FICCI FRAMES.

The Government of India is making a conscious effort to move towards less regulation of the media and entertainment industry, and is encouraging auto regulation by industry,” said Mr. Sunil Arora, Secretary, Ministry of Information & Broadcasting, at a keynote session on ‘Making India a Global M&E Hub’. Mr. Arora said that the industry had time and again raised the issue of ‘clearances’, hence the government was easing and liberalising the process of security clearances, to allow greater flexibility for the film fraternity. Speaking about the FM radio station licence auctions, he said after the successful auction last year, a  new set of rules have been submitted to the Cabinet, for the next phase of FM radio auctions.

Underlining the challenges for making India a global M&E hub, Mr. Arora said that the theatre density (number of cinemas in relation to the population) of the country left a lot to be desired (India has 9,000-10,000 cinemas only, a poor comparison to many other nations). There was a need to increase the number of theatres in the country. On the taxation side, he said that the levies would be rationalised automatically once the GST is in place.

In an all-star session, ‘Change or Perish:  Surviving the Digital Divide’, the luminaries on stage were Mr. Aroon Purie, Chairman & Editor-in-Chief, The India Today Group; Mr. Arthur Bastings, President and Managing Director, Discovery Asia-Pacific; Mr. Sudhanshu Vats, Group CEO, Viacom18; Mr. Siddharth Roy Kapur, Managing Director, Disney India; Mr. Vikram Chandra, Executive Director & CEO, NDTV Group and Mr. Neeraj Roy, CEO, Hungama

Mr. Bastings commented that in the digital sector, the players were still looking for a way to drive the emerging medium. Business plans were still evolving. He added that the consumption measurement system of television was bad, and there was a need for a better and more reliable method. Mr. Vats reminded us that, on the digital platform, it was easier to measure and gauge the number of actual users, track the content consumption and pattern of consumer behaviour, in comparison to traditional media, like television, where the consumer behaviour was based on a small sample of consumers. Speaking on the relevance of the big screen in the era of emerging digital platforms, Mr. Kapur, whose company makes mainly film content, was of the opinion that cinema was being consumed on small screens, but big screens will continue to exist. However, the type of content will play a critical role while audience will decide to choose a medium to watch a movie.

Last year, FRAMES started Frame Your Idea (FYI) for those with a creative spark and the burning desire to achieve success in celluloid but no access to makers. Across the three days of FYI, over 2700 meetings were held between 300 writers/idea owners and over 70 producers/studios/broadcasters. Panellists included an international who’s who: Rajkumar Hirani Films, Dharma Productions (Karan Johar),  Rohit Shetty Productions, Disney Films, Drishyam Films, Salman Khan Films, Film Karavan Shemaroo Entertainment, Fox Star Studio, Tips Industries, Eros, Viacom18 Motion Pictures, John Abraham Productions, Kabir Khan Films (Kabir had a Master Class too, with Vidhu Vinod Chopra), Macguffin Pictures, Phantom Films, Vishesh Films(Mahesh Bhatt), BBC Worldwide India Phantom Films, Star Plus, ZEE TV, Cartoon Network , Shemaroo Entertainment, Nickelodeon and more.

Besides Kabir Khan (director Phantom, Bajrangi Bhaijan, Ek Tha Tiger, Kabul Express, New York), Asif Kapadia, the England-based 2016 Oscar winner for Amy (Best Documentary, also Britain’s highest grossing documentary ever) and the maker of F1 racing driver Ayrton Senna’s biopic, also had a master class. With family origins in Gujarat, 44 year-old Kapadia was born and educated in England. Speaking at 200 words per minute (beyond 180 is almost incomprehensible) , he came across a gifted, albeit proud, film- maker who admires Alfred Hitchcock, hates rules and is not crazy about technology. He also did not take too kindly to my observation that there was too much movement in his films, of people as well as vehicles. Likewise, a couple of speakers dealing with the topic of Indian sports on TV weren’t really excited about my scepticism about coverage and commentary of kabbadi, based on memories of my days at ESPN, Singapore.

Attendance at FRAMES 2016 was low overall, and quite a few of those present came only to network, not to attend any sessions. One reason for the low turnout could be the shift in dates. Over the last few years, the event has moved from the third week of March to the end of the month. Many regulars who have been blocking their calendars based on previous editions were unable to adjust their schedules to match the staggered dates. Though unaffected by this shift, personally, I had three points as feedback: fewer sessions than before are a welcome development, rather than the earlier obsession with cramping 10-12 sessions into a day; with time, budgets should increase, rather than tighten, as was felt this year; management should be more efficient and friendlier, than evidenced in 2016.

The Istanbul Chamber of Commerce and Tourism led a delegation to promote collaboration in the Cinema and Television sectors, between India and Turkey. Companies participating in the delegation were Ayyapim, Kadraj, Kanal 7, Outline Ajans, Pana Film, Tac Medya, TRT (Turkish Radio and Television Corporation) and ULKE TV. His Excellency, Mr. Burak Akçapar, the Turkish Ambassador to India, later announced, “Turkey is predicting content exports of USD 20 million to India by 2018." Feriha (original title Adini Feriha Koydum), a Turkish TV programme currently being beamed on Zee Zindagi, reportedly has a viewership of 36 million/week. The series, which had a 67-episode run in Turkey that ended in January 2016, is about a young, beautiful girl from a lower middle class family, named Feriha. Her father is a janitor in an upper-class neighbourhood of Istanbul, while her mother is a house-keeper. Feriha gets a scholarship and joins a private university. There, she feigns being a rich girl. As it happens, she meets a handsome, rich boy called Emir Sarrafoğlu. Then, ...catch it on TV.

All said and done, the lingering memories of FICCI FRAMES 2016 include the faces of the beautiful women from the Turkish delegation, and the tasty balaclava and nuts they distributed to a select sample. Feriha might have mixed responses, but everybody is nuts about balaclava.