Mumbai: At the Big Picture Summit organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) on 16 & 17 November, among the many dignitaries that were in attendance and spoke on various topics, the ministry of information & broadcasting (MIB) secretary Apurva Chandra was also present.
On his recent visit to the Global Media Congress in Abu Dhabi, he made some observations and spoke about the same. He raised his concern (as well as the concern of many) with regard to the fact that the use of social media is on the rise and traditional media is on the decline.
"The use of social media is increasing – that is how the consumption of media now takes place. And within that too, there is the short video format, which has become more popular. In fact, I was surprised to learn that youngsters now turn to TikTok for search and not Google anymore – TikTok has now become a more popular search engine as compared to Google because nowadays short videos are available for anything and everything," he stated.
Chandra elucidated that now there is an issue of credibility. "For people of our age, the credibility of the media is paramount. Achieving credibility in social media will be the challenge. The media authorities will also have to consider that viewers' tastes are changing towards shorter and shorter versions."
He went on to reveal that the next big thing that MIB is working on is direct-to-mobile broadcast. A pilot study by IIT Kanpur and Sankhya Labs on direct-to-mobile broadcasting that had been undertaken in Bengaluru has been successful; a similar pilot study will be launched soon in Noida or someplace near Delhi.
He added, "There are 20 crore households, 60 crore smartphone users, and 80 crore broadband users. Once we start direct-to-mobile broadcasting, the reach of the TV media would be much higher."
Additionally, Chandra mentioned that they are also working on the issue of TRP ratings.
"The reverse path data (RPD) pilot has also been successful; the report has been submitted. We will now take it forward on integrating more and more RPD. The major concern was that the number of households involved in Barc ratings is very low and it should be increased. Once RPD is implemented, the TRP will become much larger," he assured.
