ITV

Category: I&B Ministry

  • Public broadcasters of India and Ethiopia to work in exchange of content

    NEW DELHI: India and Ethiopia have agreed to have an institutional mechanism for collaboration between public broadcasters of both the countries in areas of content generation and capacity building of officials.

    The two countries also decided to strengthen cooperation in critical areas related to communication and outreach and this cooperation would be worked out through a policy and institutional framework in the various domains.

    This was decided in a meeting between Information and Broadcasting Minister M Venkaiah Naidu and an Ethiopian delegation led by its communications minister Negeri Lencho

    India would provide full support to Ethiopia for capacity building in critical subjects related to communication and journalism through the Indian Institute of Mass Communications.

    The possibility of student exchange programmes between educational institutions of both the countries was also discussed.

  • Report details of TV channels by Mar-end or face action, teleports warned

    NEW DELHI: Teleports which fail to give full information of TV channels uplinked or downlinked by them within 15 days will be considered as lapsed and action initiated to cancel permission.

    The Information and Broadcasting Ministry said in a note put on its website but dated 17 March that all teleports have to report within fifteen days according to the formula attached to the notice on mib.nic.in.

    The Ministry had on 7 January 20I3 directed all the teleport operators having permission for up-linking and down-linking of TV channels to furnish the detailed list of TV Channels being uplinked from their teleport every month.

    The note said: “It has come to the notice of this Ministry that some of the teleport operators are still not furnishing the above monthly report and those who are furnishing the report, the data do not match with the permissions issued by this Ministry for uplinking/downlinking of TV channels from their respective teleports.

    The Ministry had decided that all the teleport operators having permission for up-linking and down-linking of TV channels shall immediately furnish details of the permissions issued by Ministry till date for uplinking/downlinking of TV channels from their teleports in the fixed proforma.

    Teleports who do not give such information will be presumed to be non-functional and action will be initiated for cancellation of the teleport permission.

    “Furnishing this information is mandatory and non-compliance will be construed as violation of the uplinking guidelines”, the Ministry said.

  • MIB’s Ajay Mittal allays media industry fears, paints positive picture

    MUMBAI: Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (MIB) secretary Ajay Mittal today expressed faith in the strength of Indian institutions to withstand the challenges in the Indian media sector that have arisen out of fringe elements at play.

    Pointing out that MIB and the other government departments have taken several positive initiatives for the upliftment of the Indian media and entertainment sector, Mittal said, “Have faith in the strength of the Indian Constitution and various institutions to take on the challenges created by fringe groups (on creative freedom).”

    His comments on informal and fringe censorship issues came about as they were raised by Star India Chairman and CEO and Ficci Entertainment & Media Committee chairman Uday Shankar in his theme address earlier. Shankar criticized the fringe elements trying to bring about parallel censorships and media curbs in a modern India and which was detrimental to realizing the dream of Digital India.

    Mittal, who was delivering the Inaugural Address at the 18th edition of the Ficci-Frames 2017 here, said that while the country’s rich traditions have ample scope to provide base for varied content, it’s time for distribution and monetization of content to step in and take industry’s growth to the next level.

    The Indian M&E sector’s CAGR of 14.3 per cent by 2020 would be “almost double the growth” of global trends, Mittal reeled out some figures in his address, saying that the government is fully aware of the importance of the digital media that has shown a growth of 35 per cent.

    The secretary also pointed out that to further ease doing business in India, the government has created a separate category of visas for foreigners under ‘film visa’ so more films, etc could be shot in India.

    Dwelling on IPR and taxation issues, two vexed matters of the media industry, Mittal said that the government’s endeavor was to work with various stakeholders so IPR could be adequately and effectively protected. “Apart from IPR, we have also held discussions with various State governments on tax matters,” he added.

    As part of MIB initiatives, Mittal listed out work on digitization, radio FM, incentivizing film production, streamlining government support for print medium, amongst many other achievements, firmly adding that the government’s effort to “liberalize” media industry “cannot be denied.”

  • MIB favours switching to DTH if consumers have problems with MSOs or LCOs

    NEW DELHI: The ministry of information and broadcasting (MIB) has said that HITS (Head-end In The Sky), private DTH and DD FreeDish are the options in remote rural areas while discussing the issue of the concerns expressed by operators that over 20 per cent of rural and remote areas were not financially and technically viable.

    DTH operators were advised by MIB to pay special attention to such area enabling customers in these areas to readily adopt these services given by them and to explore the possibility of cost effective packages especially for these remote and inaccessible areas.

    About the issue of sharing infrastructure cost with MSOs & Local Cable Operators (LCOs) keeping in mind high cost of providing signals in remote areas, the Ministry said it felt consumers have the option to take services from DTH operators and/or DD Free Dish and it may not be administratively feasible by the Ministry to share cost for infrastructure as a large number of MSOs and LCOs are operating in these areas.

    MeITY to solve problems relating to STB manufacturers

    A Parliamentary Committee was told that the Electronics and IT (MeitY) Ministry was attempting to address the entire value-chain holistically and was in active consultation with the concerned Ministries in view of the demands by the Association of domestic STBs manufacturers of long term financing to the MSOs and 0% import duty with effect from 1 January 2016 under India-ASEAN FTA which has also adversely affected the production of domestic STBs.

    The Committee noted that though there was no stay now after all cases relating to Phase III were transferred to the Delhi High Court, the cut-off date was extended “due to poor seeding of STBs because of the uncertainty caused due to the court cases.”

    Under-utilisation of funds due to market uncertainty

    It was also noted that Rs 50 million was allocated at budget estimate stage 2016-17 which was reduced to Rs 30 million at Revised estimates 2016-17 due to the large number of court cases filed in various High Courts and “total uncertainty in the market” about the implementation of cut-off date of 31 December 2015 & 31 December 2016 for Phase III and Phase IV of digitisation respectively.

    As a result, workshops with the nodal officers could not be conducted, which resulted in the underutilisation of funds from the projections made at BE stage.

  • Present mechanism to check TV content is adequate, says Rathore

    NEW DELHI: Noting that the present mechanism for checking content of private television channels is considered adequate, the minister of state for information & broadcasting Rajyavardhan Rathore has said “there is no need to clarify the restrictions on right to freedom of speech and expression guaranteed under the Constitution in so far as the issues of national security and interests are concerned.”

    In a reply in the Parliament, Rathore said the Programme and Advertising Codes and the Inter-Ministerial Committee (IMC) set up in the Ministry to look into specific complaints or suo-motu take cognizance against the violation of Programme and Advertising Codes are sufficient. The IMC functions in a recommendatory capacity. The final decision is taken by the competent authority based on the recommendations of IMC.

    He said that under the existing regulatory framework, all programmes and advertisements telecast on private satellite TV channels and transmitted/re-transmitted through the Cable TV network are required to adhere to the Programme Code and Advertising Code prescribed under the Cable Television Networks (Regulation) Act, 1995 and Cable Television Network Rules, 1994 framed thereunder.

    The Act does not provide for pre-censorship of any programme or advertisement telecast on such TV channels. These Codes contain a whole range of parameters to regulate content on such TV channels.

    Rule 6(1)(p) of the Programme Code provides that “No programme should be carried in the cable service which contains live coverage of any anti-terrorist operation by security forces, wherein media coverage shall be restricted to periodic briefing by an officer designated by the appropriate Government, till such operation concludes. It is clarified that “anti-terrorist operation” means such operation undertaken to bring terrorists to justice, which includes all engagements involving justifiable use of force between security forces and terrorists”.

    The Constitution allows State to impose reasonable restrictions on Freedom of Speech and Expression guaranteed under Article 19(1)(a) on grounds of sovereignty and integrity of India, security of the State, friendly relations with foreign States, public order, decency, morality, or in relation to contempt of Court, defamation or incitement to an offence, as laid down under Article 19(2) of the Constitution.

    Similarly reasonable restrictions can be imposed under certain situations on the freedom to practice any profession, business, etc. under Article 19(1)(g). This spirit of the Constitution is also reflected in the Cable Television Networks (Regulation) Act, 1995, which while upholding the freedom of Electronic Media imposes reasonable restrictions in public interest.

  • Justice dept working on legal literacy, MIB scotches reports of new channel

    NEW DELHI: Even as the Department of Justice is working with the human resource development and ministry of information and broadcasting to create a pool of shorts and documentaries to increase awareness about legal literacy, there is no plan to launch a separate television channel for this purpose.

    An MIB source told indiantelevision.com that it had not been approached by the law ministry for any separate channel. A Doordarshan source also confirmed that it had informed the department of justice that films on legal literacy were being regularly telecast on its national, news and regional channels.

    A law ministry source confirmed that any pool of films would be shown on DD, but details are yet to be worked out.

    The aim of the department of justice is to increase legal empowerment of the marginalised communities through increased awareness amongst the people about their rights and entitlements. For this purpose, the department proposes to widely disseminate awareness of rights and duties through the medium of TV which it says “has been an effective medium for education and awareness and for reaching out to maximum number of people.”

    The department noted that it has been seen that short films as a medium of increasing awareness have a larger impact as they are useful for semi-literate and illiterate masses.

    The aim is to create a pool of short films/ documentaries on socio-legal issues which will then be broadcast in partnership. Due credits will be given to the ministry/department or agency which has developed the video content.

    Meanwhile, the department is also organising a Legal Literacy Video Contest 2017 for which entries have been invited from civil societies, individuals, and educational institutes. The themes are: Child Rights; Women Rights; Rights of Persons with Special Needs; Rights of Undertrial persons; Fundamental Duties; Welfare of socially and economically backward classes of society and persons under circumstances of caste atrocity; ethnic violence; Juvenile Justice and Forest and Indigenous Communities.

    The department will also felicitate the efforts of civil society, individuals and academic institutions working in the area of legal aid and empowerment of the marginalised communities by announcing awards for short films/documentaries under these categories.

    The details to submit entries for awards by civil society, individuals, and educational institutions under the Legal Literacy Video Contest 2017 are available on the department’s website. The last date for submission of entries is 27 March 2017.

    The Department of Justice has been allocated the function of legal aid to poor; administration of justice access to justice delivery and judicial reforms under Allocation of Business Rules 1961. Towards this mandate the Department of Justice is implementing these two projects on Access to Justice for Marginalised in seventeen States of India which include Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh, eight States of North East and Jammu and Kashmir.

    Both the Projects aim at strengthening access to justice for the marginalized – particularly women, scheduled castes, scheduled tribes, minorities, senior citizens, undertrial prisoners – by supporting strategies and initiatives that seek to address the barriers they face as well as to improve the institutional capacities of key justice service providers, to enable them to effectively serve the poor and disadvantaged.

  • House panel pans MIB for funds under-use in plan schemes

    NEW DELHI: The ministry of information and broadcasting (MIB) needs to strengthen its monitoring mechanism by way of periodic review and mid-term appraisal of all major Schemes and undertake necessary corrective measures for proper implementation of Schemes and full utilisation of funds made available to them.

    The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Information Technology which also examines issues relating to Information and Broadcasting Ministry has made this comment while noting that the Ministry is hopeful that the link between spending and outcome will improve and the total expenditure would become more focused with the dispensing of the distinction of Plan and non-Plan allocation from 2017-18.

    The Committee has taken note of the new initiatives taken for rational allocation of funds and trust that the strategic intervention would reverse the trend and help in prudent and optimal utilisation of funds in the current fiscal.

    In its comments with regard to utilisation of the Twelfth Five Year Plan Funds, the Committee noted that the Ministry has on an average utilised 96 percent of Revised Estimates (RE) during the first four years of 12th Five Year Plan (2012-13 to 2015-16).

    The performance of the Ministry with regard to financial targets shows that during the entire Twelfth Five Year Plan (2012-17), the Ministry has been able to utilise Rs 34.8945 billion against the revised estimated allocation of Rs 37.78 billion.

    As against the proposed outlay of Rs 217.31 billion, the erstwhile Planning Commission had approved Gross Budgetary Support (GBS) of Rs 75.83 billion for the Twelfth Five Year Plan (2012-17) for the Ministry.

    Further, a provision of Rs 10 billion had been kept for Internal and Extra Budgetary Resources (IEBR) by Prasar Bharati for financing New Content Development Scheme of Prasar Bharati for the Twelfth Five Year Plan (2012-17).

    Thus, a total outlay of Rs 85.83 billion had been approved for funding the various Plan Schemes of the Ministry during the Twelfth Plan Period. In each of these years, the Budget allocation to the Ministry was substantially reduced at the RE stage.

    This trend however changed during the year 2016-17 where the Budget allocation has actually increased from Rs.8 billion at budget estimate (BE) stage to Rs.8.6 billion at RE stage and the utilisation of funds was 80 percent as on 21 February 2017.

    Overall, the Committee noted that despite the Ministry’s efforts to improve plan expenditure and optimise allocation in the Plan Schemes, there have been under utilisation of funds.

    The reasons attributed for sub-optimal utilisation relate to finalisation of RE 2016-17 (Plan) in January 2017, long procurement process of Prasar Bharati for procurement of goods and services and delay in approval of the new Schemes under the three sectors.

    Noting that the reasons are found to be repetitive and certainly give an impression that the Ministry has failed to bring in the desired administrative efficiency and fiscal planning over the years, the Committee expressed the hope that the procurement process of Prasar Bharati will be streamlined expeditiously.

    Also Read :

    Ensure full use of funds for schemes, house panel tells MIB

    Budget ’17: Prasar Bharati grant-in-aid down, film sectoAr’s aid up

     

  • Prog & Advt Code violation: 30 channels faced action in 2015 & 2016

    NEW DELHI: Action was taken in 33 cases involving around 30 television channels during 2015 and 2016 for violation of the Programme and Advertising Codes of the Government.

    These include cases of seventeen violations in 2015 and 16 in 2016, the information and broadcasting minister M Venkaiah Naidu told the Parliament today.

    While most of these resulted in warnings or advisories along with apology scrolls to the channels, some channels were forced to stop transmission for fixed periods.

    In addition, the Government issued 15 general advisories to the television channels on various issues which included coverage of anti-terrorist operations, facilitating the differently-abled viewers, sports, communal riots, victims of violence such as rape, misleading advertisements, superstitions, and so on.

    Seven of these advisories were issued to news channels.

    He said that according to existing regulatory framework, private satellite TV channels are required to adhere to the Programme and Advertising Codes prescribed under the Cable Television Networks (Regulation) Act, 1995 and Cable Television Network Rules, 1994 framed thereunder which contain a gamut of criteria to be followed while carrying programmes and advertisement in such TV channels.

  • Prasar Bharati’s main role is of pubcaster, not revenue generator, says Rathore

    NEW DELHI: Stressing that revenue generation is not the main objective of Prasar Bharati, the Parliament was today told that the pubcaster is generating its revenue through Internal Extra Budgetary Resources (IEBR) to meet its operating expenses.

    Minister of state for information and broadcasting Rajyavardhan Rathore said in reply to a question that the government was providing 100 per cent salary support to Prasar Bharati, apart from plan grant for creation of capital assets and content development.

    He said that Prasar Bharati’s primary mandate was to organise and conduct public broadcasting service with the intent to inform, educate and entertain the public and to ensure a balanced development of broadcasting on radio and television in the country.

    Listing various achievements as an outcome of measures taken in recent years, he said the capability of the direct to home platform FreeDish had been increased from 59 to 104 TV channels of which 80 are already on air, and orders had been placed for implementation of Indian Conditional Access System (iCAS).

    (DD sources told indiantelevision.com that these 80 were on MPEG-2 , while the remainder will be on MPEG-4 which has been tested and the auction process to fill those slots has already been initiated.)

    Apart from DD Kisan, the minister added, that 24-hour Doordarshan channels had been launched in Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Saptagiri from Vijaywada.

    The technical facility for launch of new TV Channel DD Arunprabha for the north east had been completed.

    Earth stations had been set up at Indore, Rajkot, Vijayawada and Jalpaiguri and the earth station at Leh, Chandigarh, Hisar, Panaji, and Port Blair (except RF equipment) had been modernised.

    Other steps included:

    High Definition television (HDTV) studios set up at Delhi and Mumbai; digitisation of 39 studios; commissioning of a permanent studio set up at Dehradun; multichannel automated playback facility set up and installation of multi camera studio production facility in HDTV format in progress at Central Production Centre in Delhi; Media Asset Management for archive system set up at Kolkata; HDTV outside broadcast (OB) vans supplied at Delhi and Mumbai; and six Digital Satellite News Gathering (DSNG) vans deployed.

    Referring to status of transmitters, he said 19 digital High Power Transmitters (Digital Video Broadcasting-and Generation Terrestrial) (DVB-T2) had been supplied and 16 digital HPTs commissioned; four HDTV transmitters supplied and installed; a HPT commissioned in Cannanore, apart from a Very Low Power Transmitter (VLPT) at Joginder Nagar.

    Ageing HPTs had been replaced by new 10 KW HPTs at 14 locations and 111 auto-mode LPTs supplied & commissioned.

  • Ensure full use of funds for schemes, house panel tells MIB

    NEW DELHI: The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (MIB) needs to “make earnest efforts to bring improvement in their overall performance and ensure full utilization of funds provided for various schemes”, a Parliamentary Committee has said.

    The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Information Technology, which also examines issues relating to MIB has said that it “would like to be specifically apprised of the improvement effected as a result of policy shift in allocation of funds in the current year”.

    The committee which examined the demands for grants for the year 2017-18 noted that this was particularly important “considering the fact that the Ministry is mandated to have a wide outreach to various sections of society”.

    It noted that as far as utilisation for the year 2016-17 is concerned, the actual expenditure of the Ministry stands at Rs 539.04 billion till 6 February 2017 as against the revised estimates of Rs 860 billion. Thus, the committee noted that, while on the one hand, the Ministry is unable to utilise the budgetary allocations, it has cited want of funds as reason for slow pace of implementation of the Plan schemes.

    The Budget (2017-18) of the Ministry shows that an amount of Rs 440.9 billion has been allocated to the Ministry that is 5.96 per cent higher than the last year’s budget allocation of Rs 408.363 billion.

    With the abolition of plan and non-plan classification from financial year 2017-18, the allocation has been made under revenue and capital section, which is further classified into three categories, namely, (a) establishment expenditure of the Centre, (b) central sector schemes and (c) other central expenditure, including those in central public sector enterprises and autonomous bodies.

    Out of the budgetary allocation of Rs 440.9 billion during the year 2017-18, Rs 495.74 billion has been earmarked for establishment expenditure of the centre; Rs 840 billion is for central sector schemes and Rs 307.326 billion is for other central expenditure, including those in central public sector enterprises and autonomous bodies.

    There is a change in the Internal and Extra Budgetary Resource (IEBR) for new development scheme of Prasar Bharati approved by the erstwhile Planning Commission (now revamped as Niti Ayog) for the Twelfth Plan Period (2012-2017).

    The sectoral allocation of the Ministry shows that Rs 4.53 billion has been allocated to the broadcasting sector of which Rs 4.3 billion is meant for Prasar Bharati. An allocation of Rs 1.8 billion has been made to information sector, which is less than the RE allocation of Rs. 2.5638 billion made in the last year.

    This year the government intends to spend a total amount of Rs 2.07 billion on film sector, up from Rs 1.4148 billion last year. There are three schemes for which the allocation has been increased substantially:

    1: The budgetary allocation has been increased from Rs 70 million in budget estimates 2016-17 to Rs 220 million in BE 2017-18, under the sub-scheme “infrastructure development in Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute of India” of the scheme “infrastructure development programme relating to film sector”.

    2: The budgetary allocation has been increased from Rs 51 million in BE 2016-17 to Rs 600 million in BE 2017-18 under the scheme of setting up a Centre of Excellence for Animation, Gaming and VFX (Main Secretariat)” and

    3: The budgetary allocation has been increased from Rs 300 million in BE 2016-17 to Rs 500 million in BE 2017-18 under the Scheme of “National Film Heritage Mission” to restore and preserve India’s rich cinematic resources.