THE electronic media in South Asia is booming. In India there are scores of new channels straddling news, views, entertainment, music, documentaries, movies, cartoons, religion and kiddie stuff. Another 100 new channels are forecast in the next three years. The story in Pakistan and elsewhere in the region isn’t too different. Internationally, too, the prospect of Al-Jazeera in English should be daunting BBC, CNN and Fox News. Under the circumstances, is there scope for a regional channel for South Asia? And if yes, then what sort of niche channel has the brightest prospect of survival and sustainability?

Certainly, the social and political environment is finally conducive for such a South Asian project. The new, upwardly mobile, English speaking, globalizing, middle class generations in our region believe that joint aspirations, shared histories, common cultures and competing interests should underline interstate dialogues instead of doctrines of conflict and domination as in the past. Such thinking has led to a serious revival of regional economic and political bodies like SAARC, SAFTA, and so on, and paved the way for sustainable confidence building measures and conflict resolution processes between countries. Thus the ground may be ready for a media channel that builds on these trends and extends these aspirations.

Second, the market prospects couldn’t be better. The electronic media in the region is forecast to grow at over 20% every year. The demand for entertainment and news on television has exploded primarily for two reasons: one, governments have realized that the information revolution cannot be turned back, that the satellite and internet do not recognize borders and cannot be blocked, and therefore, the airwaves should be opened up. Two, the rise of the new 300 million plus middle class of consumers with rising disposable incomes has generated consumer product advertisement revenues that make business plans for the electronic media increasingly feasible. Indeed, the telecom sector is the fastest growing sector of these economies and the leading source for advertisement revenues for the budding electronic media.

Third, and this is important, the rise of new and affordable distribution technologies for satellite content like Direct TV to Home (DTH) will make it possible for niche efforts like a South Asian channel to exist and grow profitably. That means that viewers will have greater freedom to choose and pay for the exact bouquet of channels they want to receive directly. It is forecast that nearly 30% of the satellite footprint will be covered by DTH facilities in the next three years in this region.

 

Fourth, and in many ways this is the most compelling reason in the public interest – the print and electronic media in South Asia thus far has been part of the problem, rather than the solution, of conflict in the region. The media in India and Pakistan, especially, has tended to be state-oriented and nationalistic in its foreign policy perceptions of the ‘other’. This has served to exacerbate conflict and pose hurdles even when governments in the two countries have been willing to show flexibility in resolving disputes and building confidence. Many examples can be quoted.

In 1989 when the Indian Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi, visited Pakistan to smoke the peace pipe with the Pakistani Prime Minister, Benazir Bhutto, the Pakistani media launched a nationalistic attack on Bhutto for signing a cultural protocol with Rajiv Gandhi, accusing her of being ‘soft’ on India by facilitating a secular cultural invasion from India that would serve to undermine the Islamic ‘ideology’ of Pakistan. The protocol was never implemented by Pakistan. On the other side, the Indian media pressured Gandhi not to implement an accord on Siachen that would have meant ‘abandoning Himalayan territory won at great sacrifice by the Indian Army.’

 

Media pressure not to concede anything to the ‘other’ ensured that the two sides didn’t start a dialogue until 1997 when two ‘Punjabi’ Prime Ministers, Nawaz Sharif and I.K. Gujral, agreed that the Kashmir dispute would be put on the table along with seven other contentious issues for resolution. However, Inder Gujral could not stand up to media pressure at home which argued that Kashmir was a ‘problem’ but not a ‘dispute’ between the two countries. The eight-basket framework was then abandoned by India. Then, when India tested nuclear devices in 1998, the mainstream India media’s nationalistic and civilizational rhetoric was so shrill that it provoked the Pakistani media to start putting pressure on an indecisive Pakistani government to carry out tit-for-tat explosions. Similarly, the Kargil conflict was portrayed as a great victory for each side by its media.

A South Asia media channel, by definition, can only be successful if it eschews narrow nationalism and helps in building confidence and resolving disputes. That is the need of the hour as both ruling establishments in India and Pakistan seek to bury the hatchet, resolve disputes and build people-to-people contact and exchange. For the first time since Partition, talk of South Asia as a region with common economic and cultural underpinnings and interests has caught the imagination of the new generations of middle class Indians and Pakistanis and others in the region. SAARC is being expanded with the inclusion of non-South Asians as observers; SAFTA has been ratified and travel restrictions have eased. A South Asian media channel which is objective and balanced and which builds on the new political, economic and cultural initiatives will supplement the aspirations of the new generations. It will also unleash the creative potential of talented script writers, directors and producers in the countries of South Asia who remain marginalized because their content is not commercially attractive to the big ‘low-brow’ channels whose mission statement is ‘Profits, profits, that is Moses and the prophets!’ The film festivals, docudramas and cross-border conversations of celebrities and lay folk will find a home in such a South Asian channel.

 

What sort of a channel will work? I know what probably will not work. I don’t think a standard news channel is a good idea. There is a glut of such local and national channels already. They are indistinguishable from one another both in terms of their obsessions and approach as also in terms of their content. They are also expensive 24 hour live propositions, many of which are still losing money three years down the line. Much the same can be said of international news channels like BBC, CNN, Fox News and Al Jazeera, except that these rely on huge public or private subsidies to survive. The nail in the coffin of a news channel would be arguments over what sort of news to carry and how to make sure that audiences in any one country don’t think it is biased in favour of or against the national interests of any other country.

Nor do I think that a documentary channel will work. While informative, such niche channels have limited entertainment value and have rarely been able to create a large enough audience footprint to generate sufficient advertising revenues to be self-sustainable. It would, therefore, require 100% funding from donors, foundations and governments. At best such funding might be able to sustain a couple of hours of original programming but no more. That is hardly a successful model.

I don’t think such a channel should try and be like the usual entertainment channel whose menu is indistinguishable from other such channels – re-runs of well-worn Hollywood/Bollywood movies, low brow chat or quiz shows for low income audiences, religious sermons, and so on. Audiences in most South Asian countries already have access to such channels and some such channels are in fact already adding content from other countries in the region.

Nor would I want to be part of a public interest channel that reflects government policies or state interests. I wouldn’t want a channel that would be open to allegations of ‘Pakistani’, or ‘Indian’ or ‘Western’ or ‘Arab’ branding. And I certainly wouldn’t want a channel that reinforces national prejudice and misperception about the ‘other’ and thereby strengthens the status quo in politics or religion or culture.

 

So what might work? A channel which is all of the following things could work. It should be (a) transnational, (b) privately owned, (c) profit oriented, (d) creatively entertaining, (e) objective and independent and (f) interlinked with public interest think tanks, human rights NGOs and trusts/foundations all over the world that underline a mission statement along the following lines: (i) Promote people-to-people contacts, inter-state peace and regional trade in South Asia and the Middle East. (ii) Promote international tolerance and understanding, international and interfaith dialogue, international and cross-cultural exchange and distance learning. (iii) Support democracy and uphold human rights, particularly those of women and minorities.

What should be its programming objectives? Its entertainment programmes – soaps, interviews, films, serials, business, news analysis – should be underlined by themes of cultural commonality, historical continuity, economic cooperation and sustainable development in the region and counter the distortions of state/non-state actor manufactured ‘conflict and consent’.

 

What’s the market/demand for such a South Asian channel? The Asia Pacific TV ad revenue was US$ 35 billion in 2004, targeted to reach US$ 50 billion in 2009, an average growth rate of 7.1%, the highest in all regions. In India, TV ad revenues accounted for 65% of media industry, or US$ 4.3 bn in FY 06. This will lead to the launch of 100 new TV channels in India alone in 2005-2008, servicing over 40,000 cable operators serving 47 million households or over 300 million eyeballs. In Pakistan, total ad spend in 2005 was about US$ 50 million. This is forecast to grow by over 20% per year over the 2005-09 period. In Dubai, ad spend on satellite TV in 2000 on only 10 satellites (excluding ad spend on cable and DTH operators, international or regional, like CNN, CNBC, Zee, Sony, Oman, Saudia Arabia, Orbit, Showtime, etc) was US$ 560m while that on terrestrial channels was US$ 560m. By 2005 ad spend on satellite TV in Dubai alone from global companies has more than doubled to over US$ 1 billion. Growth in the next five years is projected at about 25% annually.

 

Niche channels will work, since new service platforms will progressively shift from ‘on-cast’ to ‘on-demand’ mode and alternate platforms such Direct TV to Homes (DTH) and Broadband will take up 30% share by FY 08. These new platforms will provide scope for new content formats like that of a South Asian channel. Similarly, a focus on niche channels should expand opportunities for the creation of new content formats. The marketplace will be come more segmented in order to reflect more varied consumer tastes.

Obviously, creative people will have to be harnessed to create dynamic entertaining content. This will cost money, about US$ 20 million or thereabouts. But the colour of money will be very important. Such a channel will not be credible if majority equity control is in the hands of Indians or Pakistanis because that would stamp it as biased or insensitive in one way or the other. Therefore, private venture capital would have to be broad-based and include Indians, Pakistanis, and capitalists from outside the region. Its head office and uplink station should be in Dubai or Bangkok in order to avoid nation-centricity and it should have country heads and programme editors in all the countries of South Asia. But that’s not all. Control by one or two persons would defeat the purpose of the project. Equally significantly, the project leader would have to be someone who has credibility in the region, is not seen as ‘nationalistic’ in any sense by the stakeholders, has a track record of business acumen and media experience, and name recognition to boot.

It’s a tall order, but the time seems ripe.