The 2019 media resolutions

Informed lobbying, more communication with consumers and fighting hate with civility on social media should be the industry's resolutions this year

It is the time to make resolutions. Here are a couple then for India’s Rs 1.47 lakh crore media and entertainment industry. 

Can the men and women running the big firms in Indian media resolve to have stronger, better, more informed lobbying rather than ad-hoc litigation. And to communicate with all stakeholders not just the government and regulators. 

A case in point is the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India’s 2016 Tariff Order that it is currently trying to implement. Why it came about remains a mystery? India is a very competitive television market. There are three distribution technologies each with significant scale — cable, DTH and online. There are over 867 channels. The average revenue per user is among the lowest in the world. What then prompted such a granular tariff order is a puzzle? Regulators in developed markets usually analyse the impact, cost and the gain of implementing or not implementing a new rule or policy? Consumer groups, trade, and every possible stakeholder know what is involved. There is a sense of ownership among all stakeholders. 

In India after over 25 years of private television and more than 30 years of cable there exists a lack of basic information – among consumers, media and regulators – on how this industry functions. Do you as a consumer know that Indian TV prices are among the lowest in the world? Does Indian business media know that the TV industry employs 1.65 million people directly and indirectly or that it pays billions of rupees in taxes every year? Do journalists on the beat understand how ratings work, how pricing is fixed? If a million consumers sign onto DTH or cable in a year what does it mean for employment, taxes and job opportunities? Why is the macro-impact of this Rs 66,000 crore industry not evident?

Because it has never communicated with the people who matter most. The UK’s creative industries flowered because of the efforts of industry bodies such as Producers Alliance for Cinema and Television. The consumer in the UK knows exactly what he pays for the BBC every day. The last and arguably only time the Indian broadcast industry got together to talk to the consumer was when cable digitisation was mandated in 2011. 

Ditto for films which bear the brunt of every protest and nonsensical opinion. The industry employs 0.7 million people directly and indirectly and pays a third of its revenues as taxes. 

But for some reason these two industries, which influence millions of minds through their content, are unable to communicate their contribution to society, the economy and to consumers. Can they resolve to do a better job of that this year? 

For some time now, hate, abuse and viciousness have become the defining facets of social media. Now I read that the government is insisting that social media firms use tech to clean up their act. Sure, they should clean out vitriolic stuff but the fact remains that the vitriol exists. Twitter or Facebook are just platforms. Think of them as coffee shops we hang out in. The screaming, shouting, bad language is not provoked by them. We go there are and behave badly. Earlier polite manners forbade us from showing our prejudices or bigotry. At some point in the last few years it became fashionable. A display of ill-informed hatred is considered a sign of honesty or plain-speaking. 

What if we turned things around by making decency, civility and good behaviour a status symbol? And using the same platforms that are used to amplify hatred, to amplify decency. Remember that by making voting a status symbol and a sign of pride and responsibility, India pushed up its average voting percentage in the last decade. It happened because ad films, theatre, TV and films made it fashionable to show your index finger with the indelible ink after voting. When Amitabh Bachchan and Shah Rukh Khan can vote why can’t you, the pictures seemed to say. 

Let us resolve then to fight hate with our best, most civil behaviour. As Michelle Obama said at some point in the build up to the 2016 US Presidential campaign, “When they go low, we go high.” Surely there are more decent, peace-loving Indians than hateful, vitriolic ones. We simply haven’t heard from them on social media. 

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