A very familiar term for all of us! Every second day you may come across this phrase. It will not sound unusual, if you hear that the government wants to regulate the Television content. Government has been trying to put a check on the television programming since a long time. Starting off with just one or two channels, entry of foreign channels in India since 1991-92 gradually raised the number and today we have access to around 400 channels. A strong need for content regulation was there as the TV content had become absolutely open without any restrictions. All types of obscenity, nudity and violence could be viewed that was strongly affecting the children and other age groups in a negative sense. But the government was helpless in putting a restriction on the channels because till the year 2005, there were no regulations for TV. The first came in 1995 in the form of Cable Television Networks (Regulation) Act 1995 but it was inadequate to control the content being shown on Cable TV. The Cable TV Act talked about a programming and advertising code which was merely a list of kind of programmes not permitted on Doordarshan. Infact, the responsibility of implementing these codes was left to the cable operators who had no judgmental powers to know whether a programme was adhering to these codes or not. The government had no say in restricting the transmission of channels because all the broadcasters beamed channels from foreign soils. The uplinking and downlinking regulations did not exist in the country which made the situation even tougher.
TDSAT on 4th May 07 directed Bhaskar Cable to correct its declared subscriber base to Zee Turner and increase it by 700% during the period of the agreement between them based on the MSOs declaration with another broadcaster. TDSAT's ruling at this point of time is a sign of big relief that will leave a long term impact on the industry till CAS is implemented all over the country.
