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ZEE TV PUTS A SPANNER
IN THE DTH WHEEL
Over the weekend, the Save
India Society and Society for Advancement of Economic Growth
or some such name held a discussion group in Mumbai. In
attendance were some leading names like politician Tushar
Gandhi, former mayor Nirmala Prabhavalkar Samant, a retired
Mumbai high court judge S.S Daud, advocate Sanjeev Kanchan,
former minister and journalist Ram Manohar Tripathi, and
a management consultant Ramesh Sheth. The topic of discussion:
confluence of media and technology, how far is too far?
(Simply translated that means: direct-to-home television
should be banned.)
And they were simply ill-informed
about their topic of discussion. Nor was there any effort
on their effort to even understand what the technology is
all about. The usual bogeys were raised. DTH is a threat
to national security and there is no way to control the
technology. Digs were made at the information and broadcasting
minister Pramod Mahajan's motives behind talking about giving
it the go-ahead.
"DTH is bad. It is all about cultural imperaliasm. The services
will bring pornography and mucky entertainment. And it will
try to play up on religious and ethnic differences. It must
be banned"
"There will be no way for us to bring Rupert Murdoch to
book if his IskyB project is given clearance and it violates
the law." "Satellite telephony should be given the go-ahead
before DTH."
"The government should give
clearance to a domestic company like Zee TV and even fund
it for a DTH service."
The issue here is: several Asian governments - Malaysia,
Indonesia, Thailand, and in recent times even China has
been testing a DTH service -- have given the go-ahead to
DTH with various regulatory restrictions. Are they all fools?
Countries such as Malaysia have a stricter broadcasting
code than Indians can even imagine. And yet they have given
the go-ahead to DTH.
DTH by itself is not a harmful
technology and it can be controlled in various ways. By
mandating uplink to government specified satellites from
within Indian shores. And the presence of subscriber management
systems only on Indian soil. Should there be a violation
of any programming and advertising code, the government
can very well revoke the uplinking licence. Should the broadcaster
continue to uplink from elsewhere, then the government can
place a ban on DTH reception equipment like it did a couple
of years ago through a notification from the telecom department.
It can also impound the subscriber management system and
the entire DTH service will fall apart. If it finds it difficult
to implement the ban on DTH reception equipment, it can
call a state of national emergency and recall decoders from
subscriber homes, in the worst case.
But that situation is unlikely
to ever come to pass. One cannot expect a player who is
investing hundreds of millions of dollars to make a business
out of DTH to fool around beyond a point with government
regulations and codes. It's possible that he may try and
influence domestic economic policy or even our culture through
programming. But then in a democracy like India, there is
already a free flow of influences from both abroad and domestically.
A ban on DTH is not at all
warranted. What the government should instead strive to
do is draw up a good regulatory structure, rules relating
to DTH technology and the equipment, programming code, advertising
codes, and foreign ownership, public service broadcasting,
cross-media holding and channel carriage regulations. It
should also draw up strict penalties for violators and rules
to prevent the emergence of a monopoly.
Whether the regulations should
be part of the Broadcasting Bill or not is an issue that
can be debated. It has been gathering dust for the past
two years and may continue to gather dust for another two.
No government seems to have the guts to touch that hot potato.
Hence, the BJP-led government
should use the DTH initiative as the starting point to gradually
draw up regulations for the entire broadcasting sector.
The Internet policy is already being implemented. Cyberlaws
are slated to follow. Go ahead, Mr Mahajan. Not back.
Article
appeared in a local newspaper in mid 1998
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