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Tag: Enter Media 2001

  • Enter Media 2001 ends; industry fears overregulation in new convergence bill

    Enter Media 2001 ends; industry fears overregulation in new convergence bill

    The The convergence bill may be a long way away but it was very much on the radar screen as the two-day Enter Media 2001 conference organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) in Mumbai ended today.

    The point was forcefully made in the penultimate as well as the last session of the conference which dealt with the print media and the regulatory environment respectively. Speakers representing the print media decried the government’s plans to introduce a far more overarching media council to replace the existing Press Council of India. The last session dealing specifically with “governance for the media and entertainment industry” ended with a common consensus that the industry must safeguard its own interests and needed self-regulatory mechanisms put in place. It was agreed that education on the issues involved was critical and that there was a need for an arbitration body which would be able to centralise agreements under one forum.

    Chairman the conference task force, Biren Ghose, CEO of UTV Interactive, summed up issues which had a realistic chance of resolution if an organised effort was initiated. These would be included in the white paper to be produced by CII in conjunction with Ernst and Young within a month. That all these issues would be addressed within a time frame of 12 months is what is being promised.

    FILMS: 1) Curbing piracy and enforcement. 2) Need for corporatisation of the industry. 3) Nurturing of film professionals – first assistant directors and scriptwriters.

    TELEVISION AND BROADCASTING: 1) Addressability – Crucial both on the revenue front as well as enabling proper assessments of connectivity and related issues. 2) Subscriber rates have to go up if the industry was to launch itself into the next phase of growth. 3) Current television ratings systems need to acquire greater credibility as to how representative they are of actual channel and programme penetration.

    FM RADIO: 1) Privatisation should continue. 2) Licence fees too high. 3) More FDI (foreign direct investment) inflows needed. MUSIC: All round appreciation for the way the industry has organised itself to curb piracy. Attempt should be to scale up the IMI (Indian Music Industry) model across the entertainment industry.

    CONTENT: Build Indian services / content across global markets.

    INTERNET AND BROADBAND: 1) Bandwidth issues are best left to the government or at best big corporates. 2) How to use the Internet as a transaction currency. 3) Spread cyber cafes the way STD booths have spread across the country. 4) Work on anti-piracy models for the Net.

    FINANCING: 1) Look at a model of a risk reduction formula. 2) Corporatisation 3) Limited partnerships

  • Stage set for Enter Media 2001 conference

    Stage set for Enter Media 2001 conference

    The stage is set for the Enter Media 2001 conference to be held in Mumbai on 7 and 8 August.

     

    The seminar for the media and entertainment sector organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) will be the culmination of an online interactive initiative that began at the end of June whose aim it was to identify the key issues which the industry needed to address.

     

    According to the chairman of the task force set up to organise the conference, Biren Ghose, CEO of UTV Interactive, the conference’s principal aim is to identify two or three key issues that have a realistic chance of being addressed if proper thought and planning is put into the effort. It will be an issues workshop which amalgamates a public as well as industry perspective.

     

    At the conclusion of the conference a report will be presented which will set a six to 12 month time frame to resolve the issues identified. Towards this end the state and central government will be petitioned to participate in the resolutions made at the seminar. inputs from other institutions as well as efforts from within the industry will all be utilised to work towards getting definitive results, Ghose says. He gives the example of how the music industry managed to set aside its internal differences in setting up the Indian Music Initiative (IMI) against piracy.

     

    To delienate the key issues, message boards on a Enter Media 2001/CII website will be specially created. These message boards – to be gathered from industry executives and the public at large – will represent a “market snapshot” across each of the industry verticals. The idea is to define constraints and highlight possible solutions, according to the chairman of the task force set up to organise the conference, Biren Ghose, CEO of UTV Interactive.

     

    Others on the taskforce include Shyam Benegal (Films), Pritish Nandy (CEO Pritish Nandy Communication), Abhik Mitra (Music), Sumantra Dutta (Star India Ltd, Radio), Vijay Mukhi (Technology), Pallavi Jha (CII Chairperson – Maharashtra), Rana Kapoor / Vijay Jain (Banking), Rajesh Jog (Venture Capital) and SK Chakraborty (Industrial Development Bank of India). The venue of the conference is the ITC Grand Maratha Sheraton in Mumbai’s western suburb of Andheri.