Licence is for news, not for 'bhoot, pret': Dasmunsi

New Delhi, Aug 31: Stiffening his tone against broadcasters resisting the draft legislation providing for regulation of TV channels, Minister for Information and Broadcasting Priya Ranjan Dasmunsi said they were making misuse of the news channel licence by injecting entertainment in their programmes which the Government was not going to tolerate.

''The programmes telecast by news channels contain only one fourth news, and the rest is entertainment. You take licence for one thing but do a different thing. This is not fair,'' Mr Dasmunsi said here.

''You switch on the news channel and you find bhoot pret, future telling, jyotish, what is this?. And then you go on repeating for hundred times footage of incidents like Shilpa Shetty being kissed by some actor. Is that fair,'' said the Minister, appealing to the channels to bring in some sense in the job they were doing.

The Minister was speaking here last night after the inauguration of four channels of STV devoted to Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Goa and Haryana.

Mr Dasmunsi said he failed to understand why there was so much hue and cry over the proposed Bill providing for a regulator and a content code, as these provisions exist in other democratic countries like UK, France Germany and the US.

The government first of all would like the broadcasting industry to regulate themselves and exhibit more social responsibility, but since they were not doing that, the government was constrained to step in.

Referring to the National Games held in Assam, he said it was a very remarkable thing to hold games in a region like that and most of the people were apprehensive about their smooth conclusion.

However, except public broadcaster Doordarshan, no TV channel gave the games any coverage, which shows how they were not using their news licence the way they should.

He also attacked the channels for madly conditioning their programmes according to TRP ratings which are based on some selective TV homes in a few urban areas, with large areas of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar totally left out.

''This kind of liberty cannot be allowed, he said, adding that he was going to take up the issue with broadcasters in a meeting next week.

Earlier, Chairman of STV J K Jain told UNI