India’s TV channels are abysmal
outright fake – content available online, one wonders if the news business can ever be rescued in India.
The price cap trap has hurt more than just news. Children’s channels in India are packed with re-runs of 20-30 year old Japanese cartoons. The motivation to spend money on quality Indian animation or children’s programming, using graphics and special effects that – ironically – Indian backend companies generate for Hollywood, is absent. After all there is a price cap of ₹7 a month for children’s channels – irrespective of whether they telecast a dazzling and expensively produced series on Indian history or Doraemon, an ancient Japanese series, on a loop.
This explains why there is such little educational and knowledge-based programming and so few documentaries on television. Despite India’s rich heritage, a National Geographic type network, in any language, English or regional, is not feasible. Even general interest channels suffer from the problem. In the developed world — the so-called “mature media markets”— news and entertainment channels earn about 70% of revenue from subscription.
In India, only 36% comes from subscription. The rest is sacrificed to the advertiser, the mad race for TRPs and the lowest common denominator.
Hence, you have prime-time wars, re-runs of Japanese cartoons, vacuous reality shows and hysterically outlandish soap operas cloning themselves on channel after channel, depending on the genre. India has killed television by legislating the subscription model to death. This is leading to a serious lack of ambition and a curbing of creative juices, since recovering investments is impossible.
Take an example. An episode of House of Cards costs the equivalent of ₹30 crore to produce. In contrast an episode of Big Boss costs a measly ₹4 crore. Even accounting for the price differentials in the United States and India, that comparison is telling. The equivalent for news programming is as sharp.
What is the solution? Should regulators and government departments be pricing creativity and what a consumer should be paying for a quality news show – or should the market?
Ask yourself that at 9 pm this evening.