It has identified eight key areas on which these shows can be based: health, education, spread of literacy, empowerment of people from weaker sections of the society, environment, national integration, cultural heritage and science & technology.
The ministry, after deliberations with private TV channels and experts, will be issuing a separate advisory on what kind of shows can be made, information & broadcasting secretary Apurva Chandra said. “The content will be of the channels, not the government’s, and we will only see if they are being telecast. These shows have to be in public interest,” Chandra said, adding that the rules have been released after the approval of the Union Cabinet.
Under the new guidelines, TV channels uplinking in frequency bands other than the C-band will be compulsorily required to encrypt their signals.
The move is aimed towards stopping unauthorised access of TV channels on Free Dish, the Prasar Bharati-owned free-to-air platform, due to co-location on satellite. In the past, several broadcasters had filed complaints against one broadcaster for allegedly flouting rules and uploading channels in an unencrypted format.
“This will ensure that no channel can be available on Free Dish without paying the slot fee,” said one broadcaster, welcoming the move.
The government has for the first time introduced a penalty for misuse of permission by subletting, and also announced that interest at 1% will be charged on late payment of the annual permission fee.
The security deposit has been increased to twice the annual permission fee as many channels don’t pay the fee, officials said.
For the live telecast of events, while only prior registration of the events would be necessary from now, non-news channels would still have to pay a fee for temporary uplinking of live events.
The new rules permit Indian teleports to be used by foreign channels for downlinking abroad, which the government believes will help earn foreign exchange. Earlier rules did not permit foreign channels to uplink content from India for downlinking abroad.
The earlier guidelines were issued in 2011, and many changes have been made to make the process of clearances faster, Chandra said.
The consolidated guidelines are aimed at easing the issue of permissions to companies registered in India for uplinking and downlinking of TV channels, setting up of teleports and teleport hubs, use of digital satellite news gathering / satellite news gathering / electronic news gathering systems, uplinking by Indian news agencies and temporary uplinking of live events.
The new guidelines have removed certain restrictions for the transfer of a channel from one entity to another and also removed the requirement of clearance for change of language and from SD to HD conversion. These would now need only to be intimated to the government and would not require any permission.
Chandra said ease of compliance for a permission holder has been the focus of the new guidelines and hence specific timelines have been proposed for the grant of permission. Under new rules, a channel can be uplinked by using facilities of more than one teleport or satellite.
