The action has moved off-screen. From airing soaps every day, broadcasters are becoming the main actors in a daily soap that features them in the business and trade press. Whether it is ratings, rates, billing or something else, they seem to be at loggerheads with everyone. While some of it is simply years worth of muck coming out, they really should give it a break now. What the industry has achieved so far - in becoming one of the world's largest television markets - is good. But what it has given away in the process is much of its freedom on the policy front. As an industry, television in India has become far more politicised than newspapers or film.
How often have you seen the government trying to micromanage issues in the newspaper or film industry? In the newspaper industry, the history of the press alone has ensured that governments try to appease, and not get in the way of, paper barons. Most newspaper barons happily take on the government on the issue of business independence. Television, a state-controlled media till 1991, opened up without the government's approval; but newspaper barons held off foreign direct investment (FDI) till 2002. Even now, only 26 per cent FDI is allowed.
Because of its factitious and fragmented nature, television has always been easy game for regulators and policy makers. The players in the industry are constantly sniping at each other. Broadcasters are fighting with cable or direct-to-home operators. Or among themselves - Indian versus foreign, Hindi versus non-Hindi, news versus entertainment broadcasters. As a result, the Rs 39,000-crore Indian television industry rarely lobbies as one.
Its divisions give governments too much leeway to interfere - a dream situation for any state. And in a market with about 140, mostly badly run, voluble news channels that viewers love to bad-mouth, it also gives any government a sort of "public interest" licence to keep butting its head in.
For instance, on television ratings the ministry of information and broadcasting has been far too interested in finding solutions. Three committees have been formed to resolve the issues. Also, last year, Prasar Bharati filed a complaint against the ratings body TAM with the Competition Commission of India. Though ratings are a commercial metric that the industry uses to buy and sell airtime, the ministry of information and broadcasting has asked the regulator, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai), to come up with norms for the accreditation of television rating agencies.
Why on earth should the regulator be doing that? It is like telling Trai to come up with norms for accreditation of agencies that measure magazine readership data or the ones that release box-office figures. It is not the government's business to worry about how good or bad a commercial currency is.
You could argue, rightly, that regulators and policy makers are not at fault; the television industry is. It simply cannot deal with any conflict situation - whether it involves distributors, advertisers or media buyers - without making a public ruckus about it. There is also a tendency to lobby for policy to queer the pitch for competitors or uncomfortable factions in the business. This has now created a situation in which almost every politician and political party thinks that the television industry is a free-for-all. There is constant jabber about news standards, content, ratings and what not.
This extreme politicisation of an industry has a bad impact not just on television, but it has also warped the entire debate on media policy. Any talk of media policy is now synonymous with news channels. That there is a large film, newspaper, radio and mobile entertainment business hardly figures in any debate. For instance, we have the most inadequate media infrastructure - theatres, cable pipes, live entertainment venues - in the world. Instead of focusing on facilitating that, so that the profitability of the industry improves and it generates more taxes and employment, the ministry of information and broadcasting is busy micromanaging the television industry.
The television industry has done India proud with its growth and with the "world's second largest TV market" tag. But it has also done irreparable harm to the course, texture and nature of policy debate on the media in this country. Now that it has grown out of its teens and is officially over 20 years old, could it sort out its problems quietly? That way, policy makers will probably be forced to focus on the rest of the industry.
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