AVIA commentary news

The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting on Monday withdrew the draft Broadcasting Services (Regulation) Bill 2024, which has been hotly debated by industry stakeholders.

Australian public policy think tank The Australia Institute has called on the government to implement a 2% levy on gambling to replace lost advertising revenue should it impose a total ban on gambling advertising.

This article seeks to critically examine the Bill, its objectives, grievance mechanisms, the manner of its introduction, and its practical implications.

As many as thirteen platforms, including Zomato, Swiggy, Paytm, IRCTC, Makemytrip, Flipkart, JioSaavn, Pharmeasy, and others, would come under the purview of the Digital Competition Bill

In its recommendations on inputs for National Broadcasting Policy, TRAI touches on a lot of peripheral issues rather than recommending core issues which impact growth of the sector, say experts.

A political communication observer from Esa Unggul University, M. Jamiluddin Ritonga, said the Broadcasting Bill must be rejected if it deviates from the principle of press freedom.

Convergence or chaos? Telcos Airtel, Jio, and Vodafone Idea submitted their comments on the National Broadcasting Policy.

Many successful musicians, actors and writers are struggling to make a living as a result of gaps in copyright protection, a lack of support for freelancers and unpredictable returns from music streaming, UK MPs have warned.

A bill intended to amend Presidential Decree No. 1986, or the law creating the Movie and Television Review and Classification Board (MTRCB), is currently being passed in the Senate by Sen. Robin Padilla.

The South Korean government launches the K-FAST alliance to promote free ad-supported streaming services and expand Korean content. The market is projected to hit $12B by 2027.

In her research presentation for the Meta India Tech Scholars program (MITS), Isha Tandon argued that TSPs and OTTs were not substitutable, adding that the former could be seen as a means to provide communication services, and OTTs as the end to those means.

The telecom industry has good reasons to cheer for this bill as it enhance services in the country although it also has significant drawbacks that call for closer scrutiny.

Prasar Bharati recently invited applications to onboard private satellite TV channels for streaming programmes on the pubcaster’s proposed OTT platform for a period of one year.

Paetongtarn Shinawatra, Thailand’s new prime minister, has significant film industry heritage. And some family baggage to go with it.

Cable Television operators accuse broadcasters of luring consumers to OTT while broadcasters accuse DPOs and LCOs of not maintaining transparency in their operations.

In its letter to MIB, dated 7th June, Indian Broadcasting & Digital Foundation highlighted overarching impact on all the stakeholders.

In its comments, Reliance Jio said existing cellular mobile networks had sufficient capacity to handle video traffic.

Rapid digitisation of content and communication technology is pushing policy makers to reconsider their approach to regulate these sectors and think on the line of convergence.

Malaysia’s home ministry says it wants to prevent the streaming of LGBTQ, communist and Islamophobic content on platforms such as Netflix.

Kominfo Ministry has summoned representatives from the social media giant platform X to discuss stricter regulation measures for online gambling.

NASSCOM points out that OTT services are already regulated the IT Rules, thus making their inclusion under the broadcasting bill redundant.

While there was not any parliamentary discussions during the passage of the Telecommunications bill as to whether it would cover OTT communication services, many have later observed that the definition of message under the bill is broad enough to allow for the same.