James Murdoch, chairman and CEO (Europe and Asia) of News Corp, which operates Star TV India, has emphasised that digitisation is the key to growth in the television industry. In India, only 30 million homes of the total 250 million households have digitised television sets. Murdoch called for liberal policies that can help enhance digitisation further.
Speaking at the inaugural session in Ficci-Frames 2011, Murdoch said, ?The best way to accelerate digital broadcasting is through liberal ownership rules. That means allowing greater investment as well as greater latitude for innovation, including vertical integration of content companies and satellite distributors.?
He said unfortunately, in India, the analogue infrastructure is proving a drag. ?When competition is stifled by infrastructure, the scarcity of bandwidth drives the operator to pay a huge amount as carriage fee to the cable operator for airing his channel on his network. This situation leads to the television channel operators recouping the higher cost out of advertising from a fragmented audience.?
He called for relaxed ownership rules in the DTH (direct-to-home) segment, since the addressable digital market in India has come almost entirely through the DTH sector, and over the last 10 years, the addressable digital customer base in cable industry is less than 1%.
He said in India, 26% foreign direct investment (FDI) is allowed in news media, while in DTH it?s limited to 49% and telecom-related distribution has a limit of 74% FDI. News Corp-owned Star has a stake in DTH service Tata Sky.