Regulatory Act will resolve broadcast media issue: Ambika Soni

NEW DELHI - Union Information and Broadcasting Minister Ambika Soni on Tuesday said that a lot of broadcast media issues would be resolved if the media houses stringently follow the Cable Regulatory Act of 1995.

Soni said this while presiding over the ‘CEOs Roundtable on Broadcast’, which was held in the national capital to address various issues of the broadcasting sector and its social impact on TV content.

“I don’t think regulatory bill means that there is going to be censorship on every programme. I go on reminding everybody that each one of you has signed the Cable Regulatory Act of 1995 which has a very defined programme code and a defined advertising code. If we keep that at the back of our minds, a lot of problems would be resolved,” Soni said.

The Minister said that the media sector in India grew considerably, even at a time when the world was recovering from economic downturn.

“Despite economic downturn in year 2008-2009, this is one sector, at least in India which grew. Grew, in the sense, that broadcasting grew at a higher rate along with print. This was reconfirmed when we had an international conference of magazines sections in New Delhi and newspapers section in Hyderabad,” Soni said.

“Countries across the world had seen negative figures, while in India it still grew from three percent to almost six percent in the magazine sector,” she added.

Soni further said that the different fields of broadcasting sector are projected to grow from 13 percent to 19 percent by 2014. (ANI)