Government made compulsory ‘national interest’ content for TV channels

11/11/2022

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Government made compulsory ‘national interest’ content for TV channels

The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting has determined in its latest uplinking and downloading rules that television channels are now made compulsory to telecast content in the national interest or public service every day for 30 minutes.

The ministry has clarified that these responsibilities would not be applicable for sports, wildlife, and foreign channels. The official also declared that it would be mandatory for all the channels to telecast content in national interest for 30 minutes.

Timing of telecasting:

The government officials have talked about timing of telecasting the content in national interest and informed that they are working on modalities.

Themes of public interest:

The guidelines also defined themes of national importance to be telecast compulsory for 30 minutes. The defined themes of national importance are education and spread of literacy; agriculture and rural development; health and family welfare; science and technology; welfare of women; welfare of the weaker sections of society; environment protection and of cultural heritage and national integration.

It further elaborated that the channels may, for the purpose, appropriately modulate their content to fulfill the obligation referred to, except where it may not be viable, such as in the case of sports channels and others.

Guidelines from Government:

The exact guidelines from the government is that ‘Obligation of public service broadcasting — As airwaves/frequencies are public property and need to be used in the best interest of the society, a company/LLP having permission under these guidelines for uplinking a channel and its downlinking in India (other than foreign channels only downlinked in India) may undertake public service broadcasting for a minimum period of 30 minutes in a day on themes of national importance and of social relevance…”

It also stated the Central government may issue general advisories to the channels for telecast of content in national interest from time to time and the channel shall comply with the same.