The ministry of information and broadcasting has issued an advisory on public service broadcasting as required in the Guidelines for Uplinking and Downlinking of Satellite Television Channels in India, 2022, issued in November.
Key provisions
- The Ministry has asked broadcasters to report on the same starting 1 March, 2023.
- The Guidelines, among other things, require private broadcasters to undertake public service broadcasting for 30 minutes every day.
- The 30-minute daily obligatory public service broadcast by private broadcasters could be embedded in programmes telecast by other television channels. Broadcasters have the liberty to modulate their content. However, it should be done in a manner that the overall objective of the public service broadcasting may be achieved.
- The content could include the themes of education and spread of literacy; agriculture and rural development; health and family welfare; science and technology; welfare of women and the weaker sections of society; protection of environment and cultural heritage; and national integration.
- The advisory sought to achieve the objective of public service broadcasting by the private TV channels through voluntary compliance and self-certification.
- The content need not be of 30 minutes at a stretch. It could be spread over smaller time slots. The time for which the public service broadcasting content is telecast in between commercial breaks shall not be accounted for the 12-minute limit for commercial breaks.
- The time for the content…shall be accounted cumulatively on monthly basis i.e. 15 hours per month.
- The time for transmission of such contents would be flexible, except that any content transmitted from midnight to 6 a.m. would not be accounted for under the public service broadcasting obligation.
- While voluntary compliance and self-certification would be the guiding principles, broadcasters would be required to submit a monthly report on the Broadcast Seva Portal on or before the seventh day of the following month.
- Broadcasters shall include a compliance certificate in the annual report.
- Foreign channels, downlinking in India (in languages other than those specified in the Eighth schedule of the Indian Constitution), shall be exempt from the obligation.
- The channels broadcasting predominantly (more than 12 hours) sports and devotional/spiritual/yoga content shall be exempt from furnishing the monthly reports on the Broadcast Seva Portal.
- The broadcasters will have to keep a record of the content telecast for a period of 90 days. The Electronic Media Monitoring Centre, which functions under the Ministry, will also do the same.
