The International sand Broadcasting minister, Prakash Javadekar emphasized self-regulation as most of the Indian families watch OTT (Over-the-top channels) content together.
These OTT channels are currently managed by the Ministry of Information and Technology.
The main context of the shift from the Ministry of IT to the I&B Ministry is the content that is being streamed on these OTT channels.
Broadcasting Secretary, Amit Khare stated “OTT being a digital platform will fall under the purview of the Ministry of IT but now we are proposing a decision that the content should fall within the purview of I&B Ministry.
Due to the pandemic situation prevailing in the country there has been a heavy usage of OTT channels like Netflix, Amazon Prime, Zee5, ALTBalaji. People have been subscribing to them on a large scale therefore the subscribers of these platforms are increasing rapidly. People are spending most of their time watching films, series, shows, etc on these channels.
As per Khare different kinds of media like print, radio, tv, films have regulative practices where OTT does not have one. There are no such regulations on the OTT media channels. He also added that all the ministries need to come together keeping in mind the way changes are happening around.
“In context to Adjusted Gross Revenue (AGR) the telecom and media & entertainment should be on the same level” was suggested by Khare.
Speaking of the ministries coming together he also added, “What happens to AGR in telecom has to be applicable in the M&E sector. We cannot have two different rates of AGR for the telecom sector and the M&E sector for DTH providers.”
As we all are aware of the content that the OTT channels come up with so the government wants effective regulations. Keeping in mind that the families might sit together and watch the content.
As per a source, the government said that there will be no censorship of the content but these channels must come up with segregating content and putting it according to the various age groups.
