Quality content, leveraging rich cultural diversity will bring its rewards: Broadcast regulator

Broadcast regulator Trai on Thursday said India's rich cultural diversity should be leveraged to create interesting and vibrant content for viewers and asserted that quality content will bring its own rewards for players in the sectoral model, where consumers decide what they wish to watch.

Speaking at the CII Big Picture Summit, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) Chairman R S Sharma said the regulator's approach has been to facilitate growth and consumer interest and not to bring in too much regulations or to strangulate.

"We also don't want to do too much fine-tuning...there may be certain abberations... we try to sort them out but they are minor tweaking, if at all it can be called that," he said that there is adequate vibrancy in the industry.

Sharma expressed hope that quality of content will become better, benchmarked to international standards.

"I hope that quality of content becomes international standard, we don't have to get our content created by someone outside. We should be able to generate our own content, and we have such a diverse society and culture that there is no dearth of content in this country," he said.

The diversity of the country should be leveraged for creating interesting content, he said adding that the good content will be picked by consumers and provided reward.

"Quality content will have its own rewards, now that we have this model where consumer will decide what they want to watch," Sharma said.

The Trai chairman said the technology is changing the way content is delivered and consumed. "It is changing the business models and delivery systems," he said.

Referring to the New Tariff Order in the broadcasting sector, he said the regime had allowed consumers to decide what they want to watch instead of producers or distributors pushing content.

"In the Telecom Disputes Settlement and Appellate Tribunal (TDSAT), which looks at dispute settlement of the telecom and broadcasting sector, 90 per cent of the cases relate to broadcasting. It is highly litigated with disputes of all kinds ranging from disconnection, to revenue and audit disputes. So, we said, how can we make things more transparent and put consumers in control," Sharma said.

Speaking on the occasion, Amit Khare, secretary of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, said consultations have been held for over-the-top (OTT) platforms to come together on a self-regulating model.

"A regulation has to be in a manner where it can be properly implemented without an overdose of overt-regulation on common people. That is where we have been requesting the industry to come forward with self-regulating models... for OTT platforms," he said.

The event also saw the release of CII BCG knowledge report titled 'The trillion (and growing) touchpoint story'.

According to the report, the digital video consumption has nearly doubled in the past two years. "All indicators suggest that this growth will continue and the trillion touchpoints will only increase in near future," the report said.

It also added that "the coming year will be a pivotal one for the industry as it looks to balance the imperative of growth and helping translate the trillion (and growing) touchpoints into a more sustainable and value accretive proposition for all stakeholders".