NEW DELHI: A majority of the participants in the fifth open house on media ownership in Indore today alleged that the media in the country was in the hands of just a handful of large corporate houses.

Answering around thirty questions that officials of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) raised at the open house which Trai officials confirmed was the last before the regulator finalises its recommendations to the government, the participants wanted greater democratisation in the media.

As in the last two meets, a large number of the 300 plus stakeholders were local cable operators who raised problems relating to digitisation.

The Indore Cable Operators Mahasangh president Iqbal Khan said that the revenue sharing pattern between the multi-system operators (MSOs) and LCO was very lopsided since it was the LCO community which dealt with the consumer. He said that the revenue share of Rs 80 given to the LCO under the conditional access system should not be reduced.
Other LCOs raised the issue of billing, saying that no billing was being done at present despite digital access system having been introduced.

They also complained about the poor quality of the set top boxes claiming that most were not of BIS standards and also pointing out that there was no centre for maintenance of these STBs.

However, officials of Trai claimed that a fruitful discussion was held on the subject under discussion. The meet was addressed on behalf of Trai by principal advisor N Parameswaran and advisor Wasi Ahmed.

The earlier open houses were in Ahmedabad, Hyderabad, Delhi and Bhubaneswar.

Trai had set 29 April as the last date for stakeholders to offer their cross-comments on a consultation paper on the subject. The paper had been issued on 15 February but the final date had been extended in view of the ?complexity of the issue?.
The paper among other issues has sought comments on devising ownership rules for vertical integration between broadcasting and distribution entities.

The paper will also devise rules/restrictions in case of mergers and acquisitions in the media sector, and media ownership rules within and across media segments.

Methodology to measure ownership or control of an entity over a media outlet, identification of genres to be considered while framing media ownership rules, and prescribing norms for mandatory disclosures by media entities are some other issues.

Trai has also discussed in its paper issues relating to identification of media segments wherein media ownership rules are to be prescribed, and identification of relevant markets for evaluating various parameters to be used for devising ownership rules and the methodology for measuring these parameters.

At the outset, Trai - which had issued a paper on the same issue some years earlier - said the paper had been issued at the request of the I&B ministry earlier last year following a report of the Administrative Staff College of India, in Hyderabad.

Trai said that it was felt that reasonable restrictions may need to be put in place on ownership in the media sector, to ensure media pluralism and to counter the ills of monopolies. It pointed out that such restrictions do exist in many international markets.