| Introduction: Contextual Introduction Body: Significance and benefits of the Bill Conclusion: Way forward |
The Broadcasting Regulation Bill 2024 aims to regulate various broadcasting forms, including TV networks, OTT platforms, and digital news. It introduces a unified regulatory framework, promotes self-regulation, and ensures accessibility for persons with disabilities.
Significance of the Bill
- Consolidation of Regulations: The Bill essentially provides regulatory provisions for various broadcasting services under a single legislative framework. It seeks to replace the Cable Television Networks (Regulation) Act of 1995 and other policy guidelines currently governing the broadcasting sector in India.
- Self-Regulation Mechanisms: The Bill introduces ‘Content evaluation committees’ for self-regulation and a ‘Broadcast Advisory Council’ to “advise the central government on program code and advertisement code violations.
- Make Broadcasting Inclusive: The Bill aims to make broadcasting more inclusive and accessible to people with disabilities. It promotes the use of subtitles, audio descriptors, and sign language. The Bill has a provision for appointing a “Disability Grievance officer” & hence promotes “ease of living”.
- Ease of Doing Business: The bill aims to streamline business operations in the broadcasting sector by establishing a dispute resolution framework.
Potential benefits
- Push for “Digital India“: The measure aims to encourage service evolution and technological improvement in the broadcasting industry, which will contribute to the achievement of our “digital India” goal.
- Allows for “Right of Way”: The bill includes a provision for “Right of Way,” which would make it simpler for cable operators to get approval from different municipal authorities to expand their network into a new city.
- Encourages infrastructure sharing: Just as telecom companies profited from pooling spectrum and cellular towers, broadcasters would also benefit from infrastructure sharing.
- Ensure fairness and equity: The Bill provides statutory penalties like advisory, warning, censure, or monetary penalties, for operators and broadcasters. Provision for imprisonment and/or fines is also there, but only for very serious offenses, such as obtaining registration with a false affidavit. These are linked to the financial capacity of the entity, taking into account their investment and turnover to ensure fairness and equity.
Conclusion
It is essential to conduct a thorough and transparent consultation process with industry stakeholders, civil society, and media experts to address the concerns like government interference in Broadcast Advisory Council (BAC), increasing control over digital media, and more compliance for online platform which could be viewed as “license raj”. Hence, the need is to ensure that the bill strikes a balance between regulation and freedom of expression.
