Bad weather, Indian TV channels await the green signal

Remember those long queues outside ATM machines from the days (more like months) of demonetisation? Today, the Indian TV broadcasting industry is a lot like that. Long queues of companies waiting for permission slips

TV broadcasting industry has come to a standstill as the I&B ministry has decided to review the existing policy

No new TV channel permissions will be given until a new policy has been put in place

Trai is analysing the possibility of auctioning TV channels. This could open a new can of worms

Besides, the policy review has interesting timing - just ahead of 2019 elections

Say you have an exceptional idea for a local television channel in India.

This TV station of yours will transmit signals to the satellite from India. (In telecom language, you will uplink from India, which most broadcasters do.) To do so, you need to check these boxes first. Your company should have a net worth Rs 5 crore ($769,500) for a non-news channel and Rs 20 crore ($3.07 million) for a news channel. You need permission from the government. So, you approach the Information and Broadcasting (I&B) Ministry with your application and a processing fee of Rs 10,000 ($153.9). The I&B ministry sends your application to the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) for security clearance. Then, it goes to the Department of Space (DoS) for satellite usage clearance. Also, to the Department of Revenue. And finally, the application comes back to the empanelled auditors and internal officials of I&B ministry for clearance.

You’d think you should be able to run the channel at this point? You’d be wrong.

You still need clearances from Wireless Planning and Coordination (WPC) and Networks Operation Control Centre (NOCC). Once done, you may launch by paying the government Rs 2 lakh ($3,078) annually. If you are lucky and your content has to be uplinked from abroad, you may skip certain permissions, but you pay an entry fee of Rs 10 lakh ($15,390) and an annual fee of Rs 15 lakh ($23,085).

This entire process can be delayed indefinitely by the ministries and the departments involved as there is no legal timeline to bind the process. To top it all, it’s all done manually.

For some, it takes a few months. For others, like Raghav Bahl, it could take years.

India, 2018

Bahl exited the television news business after Reliance Industries took control of his Network18 India Investments in 2014, and later that year, he launched Quintillion Media Pvt. Ltd that operates the news website thequint.com. In 2016, Bahl forged a partnership with New York-based Bloomberg LP to launch a co-branded television news channel and website in a bid to re-enter the TV news business. The television channel was supposed to launch in a few months after regulatory approvals, but the company never got the permission.

After a prolonged wait, Bahl, who declined to comment on the matter, reportedly went the acquisition route, bought a licence from a Kolkata-based media company called Horizon Satellite Services. He then applied for a name change of the licence to BloombergQuint in 2017. The application is still pending with the ministry, and the company continues to be focused on its digital venture.

45

Number of new satellite channels that were given the permission to operate in 2017

But Bahl might have to wait a bit longer.

AUTHOR

Harveen Ahluwalia

In her last assignment, Harveen was at Mint, the business daily published by HT Media. At Mint, where she spent about two years, she wrote stories on retail, food and the media business. Harveen is a B.Com (H) graduate from Shri Ram College of Commerce, University of Delhi. She has a diploma in journalism from the Times School of Journalism. Like many folks at The Ken, Harveen talks and tweets a lot. When she isn’t writing or reading, she likes to sketch and doodle. She can be reached at harveen at the-ken dot com.

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