India's ad spending soars by 15.5 percent! Exclusive with MIB’s Apurva Chandra

As broadcasters and stakeholders continue to debate over the Ministry's role in content regulation and the new Content Evaluation Committee in the Broadcasting Services Bill, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (MIB) clarified its stance. They have no prescriptive intent, said MIB secretary Apurva Chandra, in an exclusive interview with Storyboard18. The committee supports the industry's existing self-regulation model.

“The program code and the advertising code themselves are guidelines on what the proper programming should be and going beyond that will be actually prescriptive, and we should not be doing that,” Chandra told Storyboard18 during the interview.

“We issue advisories occasionally and only when necessary. For instance when violence happened in Manipur. It's essential to refrain from displaying explicit content such as dead bodies or acts of violence that could incite further harm,” he said.

Crime and such explicit content is good for TRP but it is not ideal for TV channels to show them. However, it's for the channels to decide what they want to show. That is why we feel that these content evaluation committees will be more useful. They can act as a self check,” Chandra added.

Watch here.