India Law and Technology Blog » Radio

Radio Interference: Music Broadcast Pvt. v. Union of India

Apar Gupta — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 15:22:44 +0000

Throughout the annals of precedent there are catenas of cases which are ignored. Their insignificance arises from the common restatements which they contain rather than the novel propositions they advance. The TDSAT decision in Music Broadcast Pvt. Ltd. v. Union of India, Petition no. 73 (C) of 2008, 29th April 2009 is one such case. The facts of the case demonstrate two juggernauts which stand in the path of quicker roll-out of broadcasting and telecom services. The first is the inability of the regulators and the private players to reach an optimum price for the licenses of services, often the high cost of the license makes the operation of the service commercially inevitable. Secondly, what compounds the delay is the bureaucratic system of completion of formalities for the operation of services. The facts of the case bear out that both these causes resulted at first, in delay and eventually non implementation of a FM broadcast license in Nagpur and Patna. Absence of price optimization and bureaucratic delay are symptomatic of telecom and broadcast licenses. With time I hope this decision is not relegated to the annals of the ancient but becomes a strange and curious precedent in the legal landscape, as the cases which contain the facts about the 7 year waitlists for a telephone connection. I may caution that though the decision contains the aspects of the post in passing (obiter), these are important and common themes present in several cases of telecom, and broadcasting disputes.

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The full text of the decision is available on the following link. I have also prepared a case brief which is available on the following link. The decision has an interesting commentary on the law of unconditional guarantee and is a recommended read!

The Folly of Convention

Apar Gupta — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 16:24:43 +0000

TRAI recently issued a consultation paper on Media Ownership where it was concerned with the increase in cross-ownership and reduction in media plurality. After some research I came across several FCC commissioned studies which concluded that there was a lack of evidence to link the two. The studies cannot be underestimated since they serve as one of the few sources of empirical data on the liberalization of cross holding regulations within media markets. In my reply to the TRAI I make the reasonable request of commissioning such a study to avoid the folly of convention. I note in my comments that,

“To summarize these findings the premise of media plurality through restriction of cross ownership fails to have a definite link. There are important differences between the media market and structure in the United States and India. Hence my suggestion would be to commission a study on the lines of the FCC to test whether the hypothesis holds true in the Indian market before proceeding to regulate it.”

Conventional wisdom is often built on assumptions which under examination are found false. This is particularly true in fields of law and policy. Here often, social interest is linked to inexorable means. This is the folly of convention, this is the error of presupposing that cross-holdings in media stifle plurality of opinion. For a full copy of my reply to the issues raised in the consultation paper click here.

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Picture Courtesy : Peter Kelly, Convergence/Divergence (2007), http://www.flickr.com/photos/peterkelly1/2131614420/.

News, Current Affairs soon on FM Radio

Apar Gupta — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 06:15:06 +0000

The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting has in principle approved private FM Channels to air news and current affairs programmes produced by AIR. The proposal awaits the signature of the cabinet minister and also requires a Cabinet clearance. Read more here

Spectrum Meetings : Making stakeholders and Policy Makers see eye to eye

Apar Gupta — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 11:33:29 +0000

A panel formed by the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) to recommend methodology, including a suitable auction mechanism for the allocation and pricing of second generation (2G) spectrum for mobile services, would meet on July 14. Read more here