Batting for the embattled broadcasting sector, information and broadcasting minister Manish Tewari on Saturday asked Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) to reconsider the issue of imposing the 12-minute advertisement cap on news channels.
The Union I&B minister suggested that the implementation could be made synchronous with the government’s digitisation drive.
“For the news broadcasting industry, the advertisement cap requires a migration path synchronous with the roll-out of digitisation. I hope TRAI would give it a re-consideration to this issue,” the I&B minister said at the inauguration of National Media Centre.
Trai has been pushing for imposition of a rule from October 1, 2013, as per which TV channels, including news broadcasters, can show not more than 12 minutes of advertisements every hour.
The news broadcasting industry has been claiming such a move would damage the viability of channels.
Mr Tewari also said India seems to have bucked the global trend as the newspaper market in the country is showing a double-digit grwoth and would emerge as the world’s sixth largest newspaper market by 2017 as per industry reports.
He also said a committee under Justice (retd) Mukul Mudgul is winding down its remit to overhaul the archaic Cinematographic Act of 1952.