JOIN US Under this model, the channels will be first required to “regulate” the content at their individual levels, followed by regulation at the level of bodies floated by the channels, such as the Indian Broadcasting Foundation (IBF) and the News Broadcasters’ Association (NBA).
If there is a need to “regulate” content in individual cases even after that, the proposed broadcast regulatory body, whose final name is yet to be decided upon, would take a call on the matter.
A skeletal glimpse of the idea was given by Information & Broadcasting Minister Ambika Soni on Monday during a media interaction. The actual of the whole thing, however, will emerge only after a task force headed by I&B Secretary Raghu Menon that is formulating a blue print on the issue of a regulatory body.
Soni indicated that the idea of having a regulatory body only to monitor the content on channels had been dumped. Now, the idea is moving towards having a regulatory body that would look into all aspects of the broadcasting sector.
The idea is to basically create a body that will exhaustively look after the issues related to the broadcasting sector, which are now being addressed by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) in the absence of any such body for this sector.
The government is also setting up a “small” committee of professionals to come up with suggestions regarding an improved system to monitor the television rating points (TRPs).
Now only the TAM and aMap do TRP analysis, but Soni said the two private organisations did not have adequate coverage of the country to come up with a comprehensive rating system.