'Digitisation for Inclusive Growth' says ASSOCHAM's 6th Annual Summit

Assocham organized the 6th annual summit on entertainment and media, Focus 2012 in New Delhi on 4th May 2012. The topic in focus was Digitisation for Inclusive Growth.

 

Justice Markandey Katju, Chairman of Press Council of India began his address in which he came down heavily on the media. He criticized the Indian media for promoting superstition instead of rational and scientific ideas. He said that in the race for TRP’s, TV channels focus on entertainment constituted 90% of programming and left only 10% room for real issues to be telecast. He emphasized the need for regulation as opposed to self regulation.

 

The session on broadcasting and digitization was chaired by Supriya Sahu, Joint Secretary(Broad band & Policy), Ministry of Information & Broadcasting. She spoke about how the work on digitization in the four metros was on track. She also said that is a win-win situation for every stakeholder and the clear winner is the consumer. The cities had geared up for digitization and the only area that needs attention is the seeding of set top boxes.

 

Mansukhani representing the MSO Alliance congratulated the government on taking up the challenge of digitization. Ms.Roop Sharma, President ,COFI, commented that 60 days would be too less to meet the challenge of digitization and it would be unlikely that the sunset date for phase one would be achievable.

 

Jehangir Pocha,CEO, INX News, aired his grouse with regard to the carriage fee for channels. “It is first time in the history of India that carriage fee is legalized, institutionalized and not regulated,” he said. The TRAI in its recommendation stated that every MSO may fix the carriage fee but Mr.Pocha was against the channel paying for MSO investment.

 

Sun Group,CEO, Anthony D’Silva was of the opinion that government needs to look at digitization as any other infrastructure project and support it in all ways. Pulak Bagchi.VP,Star India was of the opinion that entrepreneurs needed to work out their own course. Government and regulator would only be able to protect the public interest and not add to company bottom lines.

Responding to the issues voiced by the various panelists Ms.Sahu said that they would address all concerns but urged them to read the fine print as well.

 

With regard to Films, Animation & VFX Digital Cinema, their present and future, different panelists gave their views. Siddhartha Jain of iRock spoke about the paradigm shifting occurring in cinema. Films had to keep a low budget and use the latest technology. He also added that a huge power shift was happening from Bollywood to regional cinema. Sunaman Sood too agreed on this point but Manoj Srivastava felt there is no platform that promotes it well enough.

Digitisation has been a boon to cinema which otherwise would have declined if not for digital technology and it has benefited regional cinema according to Vishnu Patel. Now regional film producers can distribute their films better without worrying about the print costs.

 

Another discussion that ensued was on the Print media and its challenges and opportunities in the digital age. Mr.Sukumar Ranganathan initiated the debate. He felt that integration is key to what a newspaper needs to do to survive in a digital area. Suprio Guha Thakurta echoed Mr. Ranganathan’s views. He said that content for every platform needs to be looked at differently. “You can’t just cut and paste from print to online or any other device,” he said. He also added that the economist aims to converting at least 50% of the 85% subscriptions from print to digital in the next two years.

 

Raghav Subramanian,COO, Lintas Initiative Media said that print is increasingly being threatened by digitization . He felt that the younger generation are drifting away from print in favour of digitization. All of them agreed on the need to integrate content across different media to reach out to consumers, viewers and readers at different touch points.

 

The last two sessions on radio and gaming were merged into one discussion. Anand Raj of Red FM spoke about alternate revenue avenues radio stations could look at. They needed to exploit social media. They could build communities on social media for commerce.

 

Geetanshu Anand of Mystica Music felt there is no lack of avenues for revenues. They only had to fill up the loopholes for revenues and radio had to start promoting non-film music alongside film music.

Anshu Mor of Microsoft  spoke on the concept of gaming and how it had to be changed. Social media plays a huge role in marketing and helps to promote brands. In conclusion to this discussion Viraj Malik voiced his opinion that with mobile gaming on the rise and mobile being big in terms of reach and affordability a huge opportunity is created for content and app developers.

 

Thus digitization is definitely being welcomed in the industry and its effect will play an important role in the future of entertainment and media.