Starting in March, all private TV channels will have to show 15 hours of content of national interest every month. Monday, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting sent out a detailed notice about this.
As part of the new rules for uplinking and downlinking of TV channels, private broadcasters are required to do 30 minutes of public service broadcasting every day, based on themes given by the ministry. In this case, the ministry talked with the private broadcasters and their organisations a lot. A statement from January 30 said that a warning was sent out based on what they said.
With the advisory, the ministry made it clear that the content of national interest can be included in the shows that are being shown, and that the content doesn’t have to be 30 minutes long at a time. The public service broadcast can happen at different times, but not from midnight to six in the morning, the ministry said.
The broadcasters are also required to keep a record of what they’ve shown for 90 days. The advisory said that the Electronic Media Monitoring Centre, which is part of the I&B Ministry, would keep a record of what was broadcast for 90 days. The government wants the broadcasters to put a report on the Broadcast Seva Portal every month.
The content can now be shared between the broadcasters, and it can also be shown again on one or more channels. In fact, the advisory said that a digital library of relevant videos or textual content could be made, which TV channels could access and use.
The ministry has also added to the uplinking/downlinking policy document’s eight themes: education and literacy; agriculture and rural development; health and family welfare; science and technology; the welfare of women; the welfare of the weaker parts of society; the protection of the environment and cultural heritage; and national integration.
The range of themes that have to be covered has also grown. “The list of themes of national importance and social relevance given in clause 35 of the Policy Guidelines is illustrative and can be expanded to include similar topics of national importance and social relevance, such as water conservation, disaster management, etc.,” the advisory said.
The condition applies to all channels, except those that are specifically excluded, where this may not be possible. These include wildlife channels and foreign language channels, as well as sports channels that show games live.
Monthly reports are not required for channels that show more than 12 hours of devotional, spiritual, or yoga programming.
Officials said that channels that don’t follow the rules will be asked to explain why they don’t. The government says that the move was made because airwaves are public property that should be used for the good of society. Several broadcasters’ representatives, on the other hand, said that even though the airwaves are public property, they paid a lot of money to use them, and any binding rules could hurt their business.
