Union Minister for Information & Broadcasting Manish Tewari has assured the media and advertising fraternity that the industry views will be taken into full consideration while framing policies relating to the sector. Speaking at the International Advertising Association’s 1st IAA Leadership Awards function in Mumbai on Saturday night, Mr. Tewari listed out paradoxes associated with the media and entertainment industry – self regulation, skewed revenue model, imperfect audience measurement models, among others. He said “issues are contentious, no doubt, but if you delay decisions, situation will engulf you completely”.
Over-arching regulatory architecture
The Minister highlighted the need to create a statutory mechanism to address issues related to convergence across media, entertainment and telecom. He said “convergence across media, entertainment and telecom space, especially with digitization kicking in, is inevitable. Therefore, at some point in time there will have to be an over-arching statutory architecture to look into the issues.” He however said that the self regulation of the content remained the preferred option, but it had to be broad based and balanced. Mr. Tewari said “freedom of speech should not extend to the right to offend and individual’s right to privacy must be respected”.
Digitization benefits
About the digitization programme of the government, the Minister said his Ministry is on course in implementing the second phase of digitization in 38 cities with million plus population. He said digitization, besides benefitting consumers in terms of better viewing quality, would also address the skewed revenue model of the media and entertainment industry by bringing in clarity about the customer base. He hoped, that would prompt the industry to observe limits on advertising time.
Mr. Tewari also mentioned about the imperfect model of audience measurement, and called for development of a ‘far more qualitative model’ to address the issue of television viewership.
The Minister presented the IAA Leadership Awards in various categories honouring individuals in the field of marketing, advertising and media. Veteran media professional Pradeep Guha, who was associated with the Times Group and Zee Network was inducted into the Hall of Fame, while advertising industry veteran Sam Balsara was honoured with the Media Agency Head of the Year award. In all there were 18 categories of Awards including Creative Agency Head, Best CEO, Media Person of the Year, best Editor, best News Anchor, Marketing head of the year in Banking, Insurance, automobile, telecom, FMCG products, travel and hospitality, among others.
The event was attended by more than 400 senior professionals from advertising, media and marketing fields from all over the country.
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