Broadcasting Bill to undergo major changes

New Delhi, Sep 7 (UNI) The draft of the Broadcasting Services Regulation Bill might undergo a sea change to allay the fears of broadcasters, Minister for Information and Broadcasting Priya Ranjan Dasmunsi indicated here today.

Talking to reporters after a meeting with the representatives of TV news channels and other stakeholders, the Minister said he was ready to consider the Bill afresh and meet the objections of news broadcasters as far as possible.

He, however, said would not postpone the bill for a year as demanded by the NBA.

Mr Dasmunsi also said he was not in favour of the existing system of TRP as it was based on a very limited number of samples, mostly taken from the urban areas.

He said he asked the companies concerned to increase and diversify the areas from where they drew their samples.

Later, some broadcasters told reporters that most of them completely rejected the idea of the government providing a content code. They said the existing laws were enough to draw the norms.

The industry insisted on self-regulation, and also got an assurance that there will be no content auditors as proposed in the draft code, they said.

However, Mr Dasmunsi said he told the broadcasters that they should not be repelled by the idea of regulation as something undemocratic, as other democracies like the US and UK too had some form of regulations in the brodcasting sector.

Representatives of multi-service operators and consumer bodies were in favour of the government, providing a content code to regulate the stuff being telecast, he said.

UNI