News Broadcasting
Standing Committee moots Communications Act
NEW DELHI: India may soon realise its dream of being the second country in the world to have a legislation in place for the convergence era, after Malaysia.
The piece of legislation envisages a super-regulator for the sectors of IT, telecom and broadcasting.
A parliamentary committee on Wednesday recommended that the Communications Convergence Bill, which seeks to harness the benefits of converged technologies in IT, telecom and broadcast media, be enacted as the Communications Act. “The committee is of the opinion that convergence is already a reality and in view of the long term relevance of the provisions of the Bill, the enactment should be termed as a Communication Act to avoid redundancy of the term convergence later,” the Standing Committee on IT, headed by Somnath Chatterjee, has said in its latest report on the Communications Convergence Bill.
However, it is not clear whether this is the final report of the Standing Committee or is just an interim report.
The Communications Convergence Bill 2001 was referred to the Standing Committee for examining the various issues after being introduced in Parliament. The suggestions made by the panel are recommendatory in nature and not binding on the government for action.
On the proposed super-regulator Communications Commission of India (CCI), the committee has noted that while the members of the Commission were to be appointed by the Central government from amongst persons recommended by a search committee, the composition of the proposed committee was not mentioned in the statute. Stating that the composition of the Search Committee should be provided in the Act itself, it has suggested the Search Committee should comprise the Vice-President, the Speaker of the Lok Sabha (Lower House), the Ministers of Communication & IT, Information & Broadcasting, leaders of Opposition in the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha (Upper House) and the chairman of the Standing Commitee on IT.
The committee also felt that the number of part-time members in CCI can be reduced by increasing the number of full-time members and in this regard a need has been felt by the Department of Telecom to have flexibility at the Commission level. Touching upon the proposal for a Spectrum Management Committee to be chaired by the cabinet secretary, the standing committee said the cabinet secretary with his diverse responsibilities and pre-occupations may not be able to devote the required time and attention in chairing the spectrum management group, which in turn may result in delay in allocation.
“Spectrum management being a highly complex and technical work, should be better left to the overall guidance of a professional in that area,” it said. Pointing out certain overlapping provisions in relation to assignment and interference in spectrum matters which could “lead to confusion”, it said the divergence in various spectrum related provisions should be removed and the role and functions of the Central government, CCI and Spectrum Manager should be unambiguously spelt out.
Touching on a particular clause of the Bill that provided for exempting any person or class of persons from payment of licence fee or registration fee in “public interest”, by the Central government, the Committee rejected DoT’s view that it should not be construed as being against the underlying principles of promoting a competitive environment. “The committee cannot subscribe to the statement made by the department, because any exemption from payment of licence or registration fee to any person or class of persons, even if accorded in public interest, can lead to situations such as inadvertently going against the underlying principle of promoting a competitive environment,” it said.
The committee also enquired whether the term “media” referred to in the Bill covered print media also, and it was clarified that “media” was meant as “carriage”. The committee said the connotation of the word media as referred to in the Bill, should be clarified in the Bill itself, in order to avoid confusion. “The committee further desires the government to see whether the cable service operators can be allowed to continue to operate on the basis of registration as is the present practice in order to obviate any apprehension of possible extinction of small cable operators in case the licensing regime was introduced for them,” the Committee said.
However, for providing any additional services such as Internet telephony, they may be brought under a corresponding licensing regime as envisaged under the Bill, it said. On the proposed Communication Appellate Tribunal, which would hear appeals against decisions or orders of the CCI, the standing committee on IT rejected DoT’s submission that being a judicial process, a specific time-limit may not be possible to be adhered to. “The committee feels that 60 days is a sufficient period in which Appellate Tribunal should be able to dispose of an appeal filed by any person aggrieved by a decision or order of the Commission,” it said.
Stating that it was not convinced by DoT’s logic relating to qualification criteria for members of the tribunal, the Committee said the qualification should not be restricted to a Judge of a High Court alone. “It should be widened to include those who also are eligible to become a judge in high court,” it said while recommending suitable amendments. Opinion was divided in the committee about the desirability of having a Communication Commission of India at this stage with a section expressing apprehensions that instead of being a facilitator in the growth of IT, the Commission may turn out to be a regulator and decelerate the growth of the industry. They were of the view this sector should be left alone to develop itself by regulation and asserted that government intervention was not at all desirable.
News Broadcasting
Newsrooms rethink AI, trust and revenue models
Editors and tech leaders debate tools, deepfakes and viability.
MUMBAI: If yesterday’s newsroom ran on caffeine and chaos, tomorrow’s may well run on code but with a human still holding the pen. At the 22nd edition of the Video Broadcast and Broadband Tech Summit hosted by IndianTelevision.com, some of the sharpest minds in Indian media gathered to examine how artificial intelligence, automation and shifting audience behaviour are reshaping journalism. The session, titled The Newsroom of Tomorrow Tools, Trust, and Business Viability In Focus, did not descend into techno-utopian hype. Instead, it wrestled with a more uncomfortable question: how do you stay relevant, credible and profitable when the audience is changing faster than the headline cycle?
The panel featured Govindraj Ethiraj, Editor of The Core, Dr Nilesh Khare, COO of Sakal Media Group; Prakaran Tiwari, Chief Executive Producer at NDTV Profit; Manoj Padmanabhan, Head of Business Media and Entertainment at AWS; Neeraj Mishra, Key Account Manager at Vizrt and session chair; and Mayuresh Konnur, Bilingual Correspondent at Collective Newsroom, publisher for BBC in India.
Govindraj Ethiraj set the tone with a frank assessment. “The reason people do not consume as much news through us is because they are consuming news through other sources they trust more,” he said. In a fragmented ecosystem flooded with content, trust has become the real differentiator.
Yet AI is undeniably transforming workflows. Ethiraj admitted he now uses AI tools to proofread his own articles. “Sometimes it is scary how much it picks, but it helps,” he said. What once required layers of sub-editing can now be assisted by machines trained to flag errors, inconsistencies and structural weaknesses.
He pointed to how newsroom roles have evolved. The desk editor, widely advertised over the last 15 years, barely existed in its current form before the internet boom. As digital publishing accelerated, tasks such as curating listicles, ranking stories and optimising headlines became specialised functions. Now, many of those responsibilities can be performed or at least supported by AI systems. The disruption is not hypothetical; it is operational.
Dr Nilesh Khare approached the issue from both a business and technological standpoint. Sakal Media Group is developing its own large language model, built on 60 years of text and photo archives. The goal is independence. “We won’t need to depend on other platforms to develop ours,” he said, underscoring the strategic value of proprietary data.
For Khare, AI represents opportunity as much as anxiety. It can help expand content across geographies and languages, particularly in bridging North and South Indian markets. It can streamline production and reduce costs. He did not shy away from the implications. “As a journalist I feel bad but as a content producer I feel good that we will require less manpower,” he said, articulating a tension many in the room recognised but few openly admit.
He also highlighted how audience behaviour is evolving. Today, a retail investor can follow a stock using Gemini or GPT instead of toggling between multiple news channels. News is no longer consumed linearly; it is queried, personalised and synthesised. The newsroom must therefore produce content that survives not just on screens but within AI-generated summaries.
Prakaran Tiwari offered a more philosophical reflection. “AI has developed itself and adapted on the basis of how news is consumed. It’s all about giving a perspective,” he said. In his view, the competitive edge will not lie in speed alone but in interpretation. Facts are increasingly commoditised; context is not.
He also suggested that formats are fluid. While short-form video dominates social feeds, long-form audio is resurging. Govindraj Ethiraj noted that in the United States the 2024 election was described as the “podcast election”, reflecting how audiences are investing time in deeper, long-form discussions. The newsroom of tomorrow must cater to both scrolling and sustained listening.
Manoj Padmanabhan of AWS reframed the debate. Technology, he argued, is not an existential threat but an amplifier. “The power is given to the human journalist with all this technology in their hand, with it acting as a support or assistant to deliver the correct and relevant news to the people,” he said.
The traditional divide between a “normal” newsroom and a “digital” newsroom is fading. “It will not be two newsrooms,” he said. “It will be one newsroom.” In that integrated environment, the storyteller remains central. AI may assist with research, editing and distribution, but editorial judgement remains human.
Neeraj Mishra of Vizrt echoed the assistive narrative. India, he said, is a market of organised chaos, where news broadcasters are pushing ever-increasing volumes of content. AI will help manage scale. It is not here to replace people but to assist them.
Production barriers are already collapsing. “You don’t need a green screen to produce content now,” Mishra observed, hinting at virtual production tools and real-time rendering technologies. And this, he said, is only the beginning. In a cost-conscious market like India, AI adoption in both B to B and B to C segments is likely to rise sharply. The skills are available, he argued, the real question is whether organisations are willing to invest.
If opportunity was one half of the conversation, risk was the other. Mayuresh Konnur warned that fake news is now being peddled with alarming ease using AI tools. Deepfakes, synthetic audio and fabricated visuals can damage credibility overnight. Several journalists, he said, have already faced instances where manipulated content was circulated in their name.
“Eventually it becomes a question of how authentic you are in the market,” Konnur noted. In a crowded information economy, credibility is the ultimate moat. Regulations and clear guidelines, he argued, are necessary to curb misuse without stifling innovation.
Mishra added a note of caution against overuse. “AI should not be everywhere. It has to be used optimally,” he said. The value lies not in blanket automation but in strategic integration.
One of the most resonant metaphors came from Padmanabhan. AI, he suggested, is like a brush in a human hand. Powerful, versatile, transformative but inert without the artist. It cannot survive without the human touch.
Konnur distilled the session’s core takeaway, AI is inevitable, but the art of storytelling will never disappear.
In a media landscape defined by speed, shrinking attention spans and intense competition, the newsroom of tomorrow is not simply a technological upgrade. It is a recalibration. Between efficiency and ethics. Between automation and authenticity. Between reducing manpower and retaining meaning.
The algorithms may write cleaner copy and generate sharper graphics. They may even predict what audiences want before audiences know it themselves. But the enduring task remains unchanged to tell stories that inform, interrogate and inspire.
And for that, the human newsroom is still very much open for business.
