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1 This document is downloaded from DR-NTU, Nanyang Technological University Library, Singapore. Title Multi-channel television delivery opportunities in the South Asia region : prospects, concerns and apprehensions Author(s) Bhatia, Brajesh Citation Bhatia, B. (1993). Multi-channel television delivery opportunities in the South Asia region : prospects, concerns and apprehensions. In AMIC Seminar on the Social and Cultural Impact of Satellite Broadcasting in Asia, Singapore, Feb 1-3, Singapore: Asian Media Information and Communication Centre. Date 1993 URL Rights

2 Multi-Channel Television Delivery Opportunities In The South Asia Region : Prospects, Concerns and Apprehensions by Brajesh Bhatia

3 @ ^2r AMIC SEMINAR ON THE SOCIAL AND CULTURAL IMPACT OF SATELLITE BROADCASTING IN ASIA Singapore, 1-3 February 1993 MULTI-CHANNEL TELEVISION DELIVERY OPPORTUNITIES IN THE SOUTH ASIA REGION PROSPECTS, CONCERNS AND APPREHENSIONS by BRAJESH BHATIA This presentation deals with countries in the South Asia region which comprises Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. The region is experiencing a wave of satellite broadcasting direct-to-home television services and to a certain extent it is revolutionizing the way Indians, Pakistanis, Sri Lankans and Bangladeshis entertain themselves and acquire information, especially news domestic as well as foreign for some time now. How has this change come about and to what extent it is affecting their social and cultural life? Let us first look at some of the overall figures in respect of sources of home entertainment globally. SOURCES OF HOME ENTERTAINMENT IN THE WORLD BY REGION (NUMBER OF TELEVISION AND RADIO RECEIVERS IN USE) (IN MILLIONS) REGION POPULATION TELEVISION RADIO Number % Number % Number AFRICA AMERICA, NORTH AMERICA, SOUTH ARAB WORLD ASIA OCEANIA EUROPE-USSR , % TOTAL 5, , ,

4 - 2 - The picture emerging from the above table looks some what imbalanced. While North America and Europe (including USSR) share 5.3 and 15.2 per cent of the World's population respectively, their share of ownership of radio and television extends to 19.2 and 34.8 per cent respectively. On the other hand, Asia is home to the 57.2 per cent of the global population, its share of radio and television sets is confined to 31.3 per cent only. However, with the economies of developing countries growing at a much faster pace in the past few years, this picture may soon change. The share of improved technology has also not been a balanced one between the developed and the developing regions. But beginnings have been made. Satellite Instructional Television Experiment, better known as SITE, conducted by India in with ATS-6 loaned by the US to the Government of India for a period of one year was the beginning of the use of satellites for transmitting television programmes to remote villages in the region. The experiment and the mode of transmission although continued but largely remained dormant for the next few years and to be exact until The big boost to satellite television in the region came with the Gulf War in early 1991 when people's appetite for news was whetted by 24-hour a day transmission by CNN and local television stations started transmitting CNN newscasts. Once the Gulf War was over, the people were fed up watching "international news" and started looking for other avenues. And the real boom came when the Satellite Television Asian Region, popularly known as the STAR TV started beaming its four channels to the region through ASIASAT. It kept people glued to their television sets, in most cases even when they could not understand the language. Pictures were fascinating enough. After the SITE was over in 1977, India continued beaming programmes to the six remote areas on a limited scale until Coinciding with the Asian Games, in Delhi in 1982, India undertook a very ambitious programme of installing low-power transmitters (LPT) all over India. At one time one LPT was being opened every day. As a result the television signals can now reach almost the entire of India (approximately 87%). This is in addition to the coverage being extended through INSAT series of satellites.

5 - 3 - Almost the same pattern, i.e. extending television coverage was being carried out in the other neighbouring countries, which share a common heritage to the extent that broadcasting in all countries in the region is largely government owned or controlled, especially Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. The ownership of radio and television sets has been increasing over the years at a very fast pace throughout the region. NUMBER OF RADIO SETS PER THOUSAND POPULATION * Bangladesh Bhutan India Maldives Nepal Pakistan Sri Lanka * Estimated NUMBER OF TELEVISION SETS PER THOUSAND POPULATION * Bangladesh Bhutan India Maldives Nepal Pakistan Sri Lanka * Estimated Taking an average of five viewers per television set, the total audience in this region is expected to increase to approximately 1.5 billion in the year 2000.

6 - 4 - POLITICAL, DEMOGRAPHIC AND INVESTMENT TRENDS Politically, all countries have democratically elected governments and exercise legitimate controls over media. While the film and print media are largely private owned, broadcasting is firmly controlled by the governments. Several attempts in the past have been made to grant at least a partial autonomy to radio and television in the region, but in actuality it is yet to happen. By the year 2000, the world population is going to be 6.26 billion and about 57 per cent of these people will be in Asia. More than 52 per cent of the Asian people will be under 25 years of age. The region's population now stands at billion (almost equal to that of China) more than one-fifth of the world population. The population growth rates range from 1.3 per cent (Sri Lanka) to 3.4 per cent (Maldives). The per capita gross national product ranges from US$160 (Nepal) to US$510 (Sri Lanka) and the growth of gross domestic product ranges from 2.5 per cent (India) to 8.0 (Maldives). The literacy rate ranges from 35.3 per cent (Bangladesh) to 90.4 per cent (Maldives). The availability of telephones, as an indicator of communication infrastructure development, ranges from one phone for 21 persons in Maldives to 686 in Nepal. SELECTED DEMOGRAPHIC CHARACTERISTICS OF THE REGION million Population Population Growth % GNP Per capita US$ GDP growth % Literacy rate % Peopl per hone Bangladesh Bhutan India Maldives Nepal Pakistan Sri Lanka Source: ASIAWEEK, 13 November 1992.

7 - 5 - In spite of certain local trouble spots, conflicts and disturbances, the economies of all nations in the region are growing however, not at the rate the governments would like them to grow. The GDP growth rate has been ranging from the lowest in India (2.5%) to the highest in Maldives (8%). With the opening of the markets to foreign investments and the governments bid to unshackle the economy from the traditional controls, especially in India and Pakistan, the economy in the region is due to improve much faster. This is also reflected in relaxing the governmental control of broadcasting media in at least promoting participation of the private producers to make it more competitive to foreign programmes. Different measures and packages are in the process of partial privatization of the broadcast industry. To counteract the influence of satellite broadcasts of mostly entertainment programmes, India is talking of opening the metro channel and handing it over to the private producers. Pakistan has already allowed television transmissions by a private company. The government-owned television stations in Bangladesh, Pakistan and Sri Lanka are retransmitting CNN telecasts though their own transmitters. However, the biggest problem facing these countries for the private producers is of finance. Banks, the traditional source of financing any industry in the region, do not easily look favourably upon the industry either for acquiring new equipment or the programme costs. However, things may change as the private producers demonstrate their financial viability in the near future. The Non-Resident Indians (NRIs) are in a big way getting involved in several projects, such as ZEE TV, ATN, Asia Today, etc. They do not look upon India alone as their market, but eyeing the people of the region living in Middle East, Europe and North America as the potential audience. CONSUMER DEMOGRAPHY, ECONOMICS AND CULTURAL CONCERNS Besides food, shelter and clothing, people need entertainment, if nothing else to while away their time. And what could be cheaper entertainment than the media, especially radio and television.

8 - 6 - Previously radio and now television is the prime source of family entertainment. The ownership of television is not restricted to the upper economic strata households alone, it has almost become a necessity among the urban households. The family outings to a cinema house are becoming lesser and lesser, primarily due to prohibitive costs (not only of entrance, but transport too) and inconvenience involved in depending on the public transport system. COST OF A TICKET AT A LEADING CINEMA, TO RENT A VIDEOTAPE AND THE PRICE OF A VIDEOTAPE IN SELECTED CITIES IN ASIA (in US Dollar) City Cost of a ticket at a leading cinema Cost to rent a videotape Price of a 180-min video cassette Islamabad Bombay Manila Jakarta Bangkok Kuala Lumpur Singapore Hong Kong Tokyo Sydney Source: Asiaweek It is cheaper to rent a video cassette player with a few cassettes and enjoy the movies within one's household. That has been a usual practice in the past few years. However, this is changing fast with the arrival of cable television, wherein the neighbourhood cable operator not only provides four channels of STAR-TV and national television, but also throws in a few movies in addition. WHO WATCHES TELEVISION? Normally, everyone who has an access to it. But more than any one else, it is the housewives and the teenagers who watch television most.

9 - 7 - PROGRAMME CONTENT, CULTURAL AND LANGUAGE ISSUES, IMPORTED VS. LOCAL PROGRAMMING The programme content over the government television stations has remained a standard one, consisting primarily of information programmes (news and current affairs, talk shows and documentaries), educational programmes (formal and informal education, how-to-do-it, etc.), development programmes (agriculture, rural development, environment and family planning, etc.), entertainment and special audience programmes (films, song and dance sequences from feature films, drama serials, and special programmes for women, workers, children, etc.). In fact, this mixture has not changed much over a period of time and very often the viewers complain of repetition of story angles, content and treatment of most of these programmes and thus becoming boring. The percentage of imported programmes has been restricted over the years for numerous reasons alien to national culture, promoting undesirable values, contain too much violence and thus having adverse effects on children, and above ail waste of valuable foreign exchange. The other considerations in not showing the imported programmes are the wide spread illiteracy and knowledge of English language (hardly 50 per cent of the region's population is literate and the percentage of population that can understand English is restricted to largely urban areas). The multiplicity of languages and dialects is a common stance in the region. The number of major languages in India alone is 17 and there are hundreds of dialects. One major plus point in favour of imported programmes is that they can be acquired at a fraction of the price it would have taken to produce a good local programme. The viewers see a tremendous change in the programmes telecast by STAR TV over its four channels. Superb techniques of programme production and use of the latest equipment provides an excellent fare to the eye, even when most of the programmes on its four channels are difficult to understand and culturally irrelevant. The equipment used by the private producers and the government television stations is mostly obsolete and needs updating, but the resources crunch does not allow it and as a result it affects the quality of programmes. As an example, low band U-Matic is still acceptable to the television stations in the region.

10 - 8 - The question of cultural imperialism (especially of the Hollywood culture) is not confined to this region alone. This has been debated elsewhere in the world too. Canada, in its efforts to counteract the effects of its neighbour, and the European Community, who are mounting a defence to preserve the European identity, are good examples. Each country has its own code of ethics and rules, especially with regard to censorship of certain undesirable visual scenes to safeguard and imbibe certain kind of moral values and the ban on tobacco and alcohol commercials on its television channels. But the country has no control on the commercial satellite services which are beamed directly to the viewers in that country flouting these codes and rules. What the audience have to say about the proliferation of the 24-hour a day television? In fact, the reactions are very mixed. A fruit-seller in a small town, who pays US$3 per month for the cable connection, says "This is the only way to keep my children indoors and what other entertainment could be cheaper than this". A housewife, in a metropolitan large city, had to disconnect the cable connection because her teenage children were neglecting studies. Between these two extremes, the other concerns which are being expressed are: if the children are confined to indoors watching their daily dose of television, will it not affect their health and eye sight; what happens to family communication will it be only confined to discussing the characters of serials; is it promoting commercialism, though it is debatable whether commercialism in itself is good or bad; and frustration regarding alienation from one's own culture. REVENUE IMPLICATIONS SUBSCRIPTION, ADVERTISEMENT AND PROGRAMME SYNDICATION Television is a very hungry medium. Once the delivery/ transmission modes are in place, air time has to be filled and the viewers attracted to watch in order to recover the enormous costs and to make profits. The revenues are generated from selling the air time to advertisers and collecting subscriptions for cable connections.

11 - 9 - Advertising collection by Doordarshan alone in 1992 is expected to be US$ 125 million (Rs 350 crores). Some people connected with the medium are of the opinion that the advertising cake is limited and once all the satellites and planned networks are in place, the competition will be very fierce. On the other hand, Mr Sashi Kumar of PTI-TV, who is putting in place a Malayalam channel through a Russian satellite primarily aimed at Kerala (one of the four Southern States of India) State and the Malayalam speaking people working in Middle East, believes that the region is capable of providing over US$ 4 billion (Rs 10,000 crores) annually. To get the good share of the advertising revenue, the private channels will have to provide high ratings and to ensure high ratings they will have to provide excellent programmes. Doordarshan pays upto US$ 10,000 for an half-hour slot telecast during prime time, while the new networks on the scene are believed to have fixed a rate between US$ 2,000 to US$ 2,500. So now the question arises as to how the producers are going to survive and deliver high quality programmes? A manager of a leading satellite channel expects that the producers will have to look at other avenues, such as programme syndication, to recover their costs. TECHNOLOGY AND DELIVERY ISSUES The biggest problem at the moment faced by the cable operators is that they have to install three different kind of dish antennae for satellites transmitting in C Band, S Band and Ku Band and an appropriate distribution system. In India, the Space Application Centre of the Indian Space Research Organization has undertaken various developments for satellite broadcasting applications and these include "Video Cedec" using DCT (Discrete Cosine Transform) techniques for compression of video to lombits/sec., Multiple video transmission through a single 36MHz transponder, "MAC (Multiple Analog Component) TV" and "SNG (Satellite News Gathering) Equipment", etc. Once these developments are in place, it will be possible to meet the region's needs for multi-lingual transmissions.

- 10 - The other problem relates to the safety and aesthetic sense of the environment.

12 The other problem relates to the safety and aesthetic sense of the environment. The mushrooming of dish antennae and the dangling cables all over the lanes and bye-lanes in the housing estates are becoming an eyesore, as well as pose threat to safety of human lives. To ensure a clear picture at the receiving end, it is essential that cabling is done properly. One way to solve this problem would be to legalize the entire cable and satellite industry instead of a laissez-faire situation as it now exists. The governments in the region should come up with appropriate and clear-cut legislation covering all aspects of the trade. Cities could be divided into manageable zones and sites be identified in each zone to instal the dish antennae and then cables can be laid out either through the existing electric or telephone poles neatly. Licensing of the cable operators and authorizing the use of electric or telephone poles would bring additional revenues which could be put in a special fund for public service broadcasting. Citizen committees may be formed to monitor any undesirable elements being shown by the cable operator in the area and that he is plying his business strictly conforming to the rules laid down for this purpose. Any complaints lodged during the licensing period should be viewed objectively by the appropriate authorities when the license is due for renewal. In addition to the governmental legislation, the cable and satellite industry could also come up with their regulatory association/organization mechanism some thing along the lines of the Canadian Cable Television Association. A regional organization, CASBAA, has already been formed and it is high time such organizations be formed at the national levels to protect and safeguard the interests of all including the viewers. PROSPECTS, CONCERNS AND APPREHENSIONS Keeping in view the expanding activities of transnational television broadcasters and the existing and anticipated impact of these services on national public service and on commercial broadcasters and their audience and expressing his concern, the Deputy Prime Minister of Malaysia, Mr Ghafar Baba, while inaugurating the 1991 Annual General

- 11 - Assembly of the Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union, had said "It would be more positive and constructive for the broadcast media in developing countries to enlighten the people on social and

13 Assembly of the Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union, had said "It would be more positive and constructive for the broadcast media in developing countries to enlighten the people on social and national development instead of emulating some so-called objective and critical media which belittled other peoples and countries under the guise of press freedom". At the same meeting a senior official of the Indian Ministry of Information and Broadcasting speaking about transnational broadcasting in India and the policy responses to it, believed transnational broadcasting would assume significant dimensions only when it produced programmes more relevant to the country. Such a situation is also likely to lead, he suggested, to a more cooperative approach, with domestic emphasis likely on public service programming and major foreign efforts primarily directed at entertainment. Mr Robert Chan of Satellite Television Asian Region (STAR-TV), speaking at the same meeting had said that the full potential of satellite television could only be achieved in cooperation with Asia's terrestrial broadcasters, who were needed to distribute satellite signals locally. He further said that STAR-TV and Asia's terrestrial broadcasters together should seize the opportunity to compete with European and American producers and distributors for the world's viewers. Mr Kiran Karnik, Director of the Indian Inter-University Consortium for Education and Communication, propagated an excellent idea at a recent seminar organized by the Broadcast Engineering Society (India) in New Delhi. While speaking on the transborder broadcasting boom, he suggested that "arrangements could be made to work out some common Asian or even universal code (pertaining to satellite and transborder broadcasting) through UN agencies". A beginning could be made by regional institutions, like AMIC and ABU, by organizing special seminars and conferences on the subject dealing with various aspects of transborder and satellite broadcasting mainly to enlighten the policymakers and media practitioners on the serious implications of transborder broadcasting and thus helping them to come up with a uniform code of rules, regulation and ethics, in line with national development and aspirations, covering all aspects of air waves.

14 BRIEF BIOGRAPHY OF MR BRAJESH BHATIA Mr Brajesh Bhatia is a communication consultant by profession and runs two companies Fourth Dimension (M) Sdn Bhd (a computer graphics outfit) in Kuala Lumpur and Visual Media Resources (Asia) Pte Ltd in Singapore -- serving broadcasting organizations in the region. Before venturing on his own in late 1989, he was deputy director at the Asia-Pacific Institute for Broadcasting Development. Well known in the region as a broadcasting trainer, for the past twenty years he has worked at the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, Bangkok, Thailand; Asian Mass Communication Research and Information, Singapore; and the Asia-Pacific Institute for Broadcasting Development, Kuala Lumpur. Contact Address: Mr Brajesh Bhatia Managing Director Fourth Dimension (M) Sdn Bhd 81-A, Jalan SS 21/60 Damansara Utama Petaling Jaya, Selangor Malaysia Phone: (603) / Fax: (603)

This document is downloaded from DR-NTU, Nanyang Technological University Library, Singapore.

This document is downloaded from DR-NTU, Nanyang Technological University Library, Singapore. Title Bridging the gap : foreign and local programming Author(s) Shimizu, Shinichi Citation Shimizu, S. (1997).