A news channel has been in the news for airing Bollywood hits on a Sunday morning. There is a view that this brings in non-news audiences, and viewership ratings should factor this in. Competitors have raised the issue with regulators and industry bodies.
Should news channels be prevented from airing content like Bollywood music? Can they be prevented? Should ratings for such content be disregarded?
Vinay Hegde, Chief Buying Officer, Madison Media, explains, “News as a genre is supposed to air news and the news can be related to Bollywood or any other form of entertainment. However in recent times there is a blur between news about Bollywood and Bollywood itself and news channels have to a great extent started showing entertainment content. In my view news, good or bad is news and in the purest form means presentation of “new” information. Hence any content other than that by definition should be classified as entertainment and ideally news channels should not be airing such content….that is obviously only for a spike in ratings. The argument that this brings in non-news viewers doesn’t hold actually because you have launched a news channel for news consumers, not otherwise.”
“So yes, they should be deferred from airing any content which is not in the nature of “news” and purely entertainment, especially a full length movie. And hence by that logic, ratings for news channels should be considered without these time bands…the flipside is brands do buy into these time bands mainly because the pricing for a spot on such a programme will be much less than on a GEC with similar results at a higher frequency,” he adds.
TV industry veteran and Principal at Provocateur Advisory Paritosh Joshi, points out that technically, this is a non-issue. He underlines, “MIB issues only two types of licences: News and Non-News. News channels’ FDI is capped at 49pc while Non-News can have up to 100pc FDI. Non-News licensees are not permitted to air any news programmes. There is no prohibition on News licensees from airing any type of content.”
“Therefore, you cannot, by law, stop any news broadcaster from airing any type of content. And if there is no legal prohibition, BARC cannot do anything to selectively make such determinations,” he explains.
Another industry veteran Raj Nayak, now Founder and MD at House of Cheer Networks, offers a different perspective on the issue.
He says, “One can’t generalise that a channel can’t show Bollywood music… it is how it’s shown … the context and the format. If you are talking about a particular singer and intersperse it with songs that’s fine… if you are doing a story on top Bollywood songs of the week, it’s still fine . But if you are just running back-to-back Bollywood songs as you mentioned as a two-hour block to garner ratings then that’s just not right. Because tomorrow what stops a news channel from running a movie on its channel to garner ratings?”
Hegde contends that if news channels are allowed to show some entertainment content, then they should be treated as such and there should be restrictions applicable to entertainment channels (including how much inventory they can sell per hour, etc.).
“The only argument in favour could be that unlike the landing page this is content where advertisers do buy time to air their ads. Maybe the amount of time devoted to non-news segments should be limited. Lastly, if the ultimate objective is to buy eyeballs and reach out to consumers and if advertisers are willing to be genre-agnostic in doing that, it still may be justified especially when we are seeing that a similar rating spot on a GEC will cost much more and inventory access there is becoming a challenge,” he reasons.
(With inputs from Smitha Sapaliga and Umanath V.)
