Who owns the mass media
in India?
There are many media organisations in the country that are owned
and controlled by a wide variety of entities including corporate bodies,
societies and trusts, and individuals.
·
The sheer number of
media organisations and outlets often there is dominance by a few players – in
other words, the markets are often oligopolistic in character.
·
The cross-media
ownership, that particular companies or
groups or conglomerates dominate markets both vertically (that is, across
different media such as print, radio, television and the internet) as well as
horizontally (namely, in particular geographical regions).
·
Political parties and
persons with political affiliation own/control increasing sections of the media
in India.
·
The promoters and
controllers of media groups have traditionally held interests in many other
business interests They have used the profits from their media operations to
diversify into other (unrelated) businesses.
·
The growing
corporatization of the Indian media is manifest(visible) in the manner in which
large industrial conglomerates are acquiring direct and indirect interest in
media groups. There is also a growing convergence between creators/producers of
media content and those who distribute/disseminate the content.
MEDIA
OLIGOPOLY
These trends can be perceived as instances of consolidation in a
sector in which big players have been steeped in debt and strapped for cash
over the past few years. The shake-out also signifies growing concentration of
ownership in an oligopolistic (An oligopoly is much like a monopoly, in which only
one company exerts control over most of a market.) market that could lead to loss of heterogeneity and
plurality. The emergence of cartels(lobby) and oligarchies could be symptomatic
of an increasingly globalised but homogenized communication landscape, .
THE INDIAN MEDIA MARKET
The Indian media market differs from those of developed countries
in several ways. For one, India is a developing country and all segments of the
media industry (including print and radio) are still growing unlike in
developed countries. The media market in India remains highly fragmented, due
to the large number of languages and the sheer size of the country.
PROLIFERATION
In India’s unique “media scape”, it is often contended that the
proliferation (a large number of something) of publications, radio stations, television
channels, and internet websites is a sure-fire guarantor for plurality,
diversity, and consumer choice. There were over 82,000 publications registered
with the Registrar of Newspapers as on 31 March 2011. There are over 250 FM
(frequency modulation) radio stations in the country strangely, India is the
only democracy in the world where news on the radio is still a monopoly of the
government. The Ministry of Information & Broadcasting has allowed nearly
800 television channels to uplink or downlink from the country. 300 television
channels were broadcasting “news and current affairs”. There is an unspecified
number of websites aimed at Indians.
Media CONGLOMERATES
The mass media in India is possibly dominated by less than a
hundred large groups or conglomerates, which exercise considerable influence on
what is read, heard, and watched. One example will illustrate this contention.
Delhi is the only urban area in the world with 16 English daily newspapers; the
top three publications, the Times of India, the Hindustan
Times, and the Economic Times.
The large conglomerates of the Indian media are usually own different
companies.
Debates on media ownership are almost as old as the nation itself.
The country’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and his Defence Minister
V.K. Krishna Menon would criticize the “jute
press” in a clear reference to BCCL which was then controlled by the
Sahu-Jain group which also controlled New Central Jute Mills.
Then came references to the “steel
press”. The Tata group, which is a part-owner of the company that publishes
the once-influential The Statesman.
Ramnath Goenka, who used to head the Indian Express group, made an aborted attempt in the
1960s to control the Indian Iron and Steel Company (IISCO). The family-owned groups would use their news
companies to lobby for their other business interests.
Publishers of Hindustan Times and Hindustan,
has included the former chairman of Ernst & Young K. N. Memani and the
chairman of ITC Ltd Y C Deveshwar.
NDTV’s Board of Directors has Pramod Bhasin, President & CEO
of the country’s biggest BPO company GenPact as a member of its board of
directors.
Media companies tend to
have a variety of professionals on their boards, such as investment bankers,
venture capitalists, chartered accountants, corporate lawyers, and CEOs of big
companies. Professional journalists, ironically, rarely figure. As a result,
those at the top of the decision-making hierarchy are those for whom the
bottom-line, not the by-line, is most important.
SUN TV NETWORK, INDIA’S LARGEST MEDIA
CONGLOMERATE, has signed an
agreement with Tamil Nadu Arasu Cable TV Corporation, an undertaking owned by
the Government of Tamil Nadu engaged in the business of providing signals to
Cable Operators in the State of Tamil Nadu. It is world's no 1 Tamil channel
that features movies, news, serials and shows -- 24 hours a day.
- Sun Group, one of the biggest media conglomerates
in the country, Sun TV is second
largest television network in India.. It has 20 TV
channels, 45 radio stations, four magazines, two dailies, a DTH (direct to
home) service provider and an airline (SpiceJet. It also produces and distributes movies under
Sun Pictures and runs Sun Cable Vision, a cable distribution company with a
reported market share of 90% in Tamil Nadu. Sun TV has grown from a single
channel and five-employee organisation to a network of 13 southern language
channels with 6,000 employees. The channels are supported by its cable company
Sumangali Cable Vision, Tamil Nadu's largest mutli-system operator.
Maran also owns three Tamil weekly magazines and four FM radio stations.
MEDIA OWN BY POLITICAL PARTY
In Kerala, the
newspaper, Deshabhimani, published by
Chintha Printing and Publishing Co. Pvt. Ltd, controlled by the CPIM(M) Kerala
State Committee. Besides, there is the CPI (M)-controlled Malayalam
Communications Limited that owns the Kairali TV and People TV. The Shiv
Sena has the Saamnain Maharashtra; In Kerala, the Kerala Pradesh
Congress Committee (KPCC) has teamed up with four non-resident Indian
businessmen who have a combined holding of about 26 per cent in Jai Hind TV, controlled
byBharat Broadcasting Network Ltd. Among the key individuals controlling the
operations are Ramesh Chennithala, former minister and official spokesman of
KPCC, M.M. Hassan and two Dubai-based businessmen, Kunjukutty Aniyankunju and
Vijayan Thomas. Interestingly, the Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee members
have invested about Rs. 20 crore in the Indiavisionchannel, controlled by M. K. Muneer, former Muslim
League minister, through Indiavision Satellite Communications Limited.
The National Herald, founded by Jawaharlal Nehru (on September 9, 1938) and
funded by the Indian National Congress for many years, shut down in 2008, in
its 70th year. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, the father of the nation,
published Harijan in
English (from 1933 to 1948), Harijan Bandhu in Gujaratiand Harijan
Sevak in Hindi.
In Andhra Pradesh, for instance, Jagan Mohan
Reddy, son of the late chief minister, Y. S. Rajasekhara Reddy, has the
newspaper and television channel Sakshi, .
The other important Andhra media player
with a clear political agenda is the K. Chandrasekhara Rao-controlled
television channel T-News.
In Tamil Nadu H. Vasanthkumar, MLA and president of the Tamil Nadu
commerce wing of the Congress, which controls Vasanth TV held
by Vasanth and Co. Media Network Private Limited. There is also K. V.
Thangabalu, Congress MP and former Union minister, who controls Mega TV, held
through Silverstar Communications Limited. The Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK)
controls Makkal TV, through Makkal Tholai Thodarpu Kuzhumam Ltd,
which is controlled by PMK chief S. Ramadoss, father of former Union Health
Minister Ambumani Ramadoss.
.Kalanithi Maran, the grand nephew of Karunanidhi, the Dravida
Munnettra Kazhagam (DMK) patriarch. Maran controls Sun TV, Sun News, KTV,
Sun Music, Chutti TV, Sumangali Cable, Adithya TV, Chintu TV, Kiran TV, Khushi
TV, Udaya Comedy, Udaya Music, Gemini TV, Gemini Comedy, and Gemini
Movies. He also controls the newspaper Dinakaran, and Suryan
FM 93.5 and Red FM 93.5 in the radio space. Sun
TV is controlled by Sun TV Network Limited, Suryan FM is
owned by Kal Radio Ltd.
DMK supremo Muthuvel Karunanidhi himself controls Kalaignar TV
Pvt. Limited, owner of the very popular Kalaignar TV . Close
associate and businessman, M. Raajhendran, controls Raj TV and Raj
Digital Plus through Raj Television Network Limited in which he owns
11.3 per cent shares.
The All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) chief
controls Jaya TV, Jaya Max, Jaya Plus, and J Movie through
Mavis Satcom Ltd.
In Karnataka the two
important players are Anita Kumaraswamy, wife of former chief minister H.D.
Kumaraswamy, who owns Kannada Kasturithrough Kasthuri Medias Pvt.
Ltd, and businessman Rajeev Chandrashekhar, an independent member of the Rajya
Sabha from Karnataka, who controls a host of language offerings: Asianet and Asianet
Plus (Malayalam), Suvarna (Kannada), Vijay(Tamil)
and Sitara (Telugu), Best FM and Radio
Indigo, and Kannada Prabhathrough Jupiter Media and
Entertainment, which owns 26 per cent of the shares in the company that
publishes Kannada Prabha.
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