Cross-media Ownership and Competition
Cross-media Ownership and Competition
The center seems to be working on act on this issue. This is a welcome move and one hopes that the proposed Act will curb emergence of monopolies across the media, and across the markets. Our so-called public telecasting corporation is hopeless and in a decade or so the private media networks have grown by leaps and bounds both in terms of coverage and size of the audience.
Given the linguistic and market diversity it will be a challenge to policy makers to evolve a policy and draft a law that while takes in to account the technological possibilities ensures that no group attains monopoly status in the media as well as the markets. Defining monopoly or significant presence in a market is not going to be easy. The question of FDI in media is also there. I think sooner or later the government will open up the entire media sector for FDI although some restrictions might be placed in terms of management, % of share in equity etc.
The FDI may flow in areas like, production of TV serials/films, media in the regional languages. There may well be a shake out in the media sector. Apart from FDI, some of the closely held / privately owned media groups, like Vikatan, Kumudam might come out with IPOs and FIIs may be interested in acquiring a stake in them. Although there is lot of talk about convergence in media, I wonder whether the bill under consideration takes that also in to account. Or as usual we may have an act after the government sleeping over that issue for many years.
The center seems to be working on act on this issue. This is a welcome move and one hopes that the proposed Act will curb emergence of monopolies across the media, and across the markets. Our so-called public telecasting corporation is hopeless and in a decade or so the private media networks have grown by leaps and bounds both in terms of coverage and size of the audience.
Given the linguistic and market diversity it will be a challenge to policy makers to evolve a policy and draft a law that while takes in to account the technological possibilities ensures that no group attains monopoly status in the media as well as the markets. Defining monopoly or significant presence in a market is not going to be easy. The question of FDI in media is also there. I think sooner or later the government will open up the entire media sector for FDI although some restrictions might be placed in terms of management, % of share in equity etc.
The FDI may flow in areas like, production of TV serials/films, media in the regional languages. There may well be a shake out in the media sector. Apart from FDI, some of the closely held / privately owned media groups, like Vikatan, Kumudam might come out with IPOs and FIIs may be interested in acquiring a stake in them. Although there is lot of talk about convergence in media, I wonder whether the bill under consideration takes that also in to account. Or as usual we may have an act after the government sleeping over that issue for many years.
