Indian Media & Entertainment Industry to engage a billion consumers as a catalyst of economic and social change in India

Indian Media & Entertainment Industry to engage a billion consumers

As a catalyst of economic and social change in India

Mumbai 18^th Feb, 2013(by Sailesh Gandhi):Announcing the launch of the 14^thedition of India’s foremost business conclave on media and entertainment, FICCI FRAMES 2013, the Chairman and Co-Chairman of the Media & Entertainment Committee, Mr Uday Shankar and Mr Karan Johar, today unveiled the theme of the conclave “A Tryst With Destiny: Engaging a Billion Consumers”.

Speaking on the occasion, Chairman of the FICCI Media & Entertainment Committee, Mr. Uday Shankar said, “The theme for FRAMES this year is ‘A Tryst with Destiny – Engaging a Billion Consumers’. While the industry has made spectacular progress in the last 20 years in increasing the intensity of engagement with the Indian consumer through superior content – there is still a gap in our ability to monetize the engagement and use the resources generated to advance both access and content. 2013 is a year of many milestones in the media and entertainment industry and FRAMES will offer an opportunity for us to put these developments into perspective, look at the larger picture and engage on such a bold and important theme”.

The Media and Entertainment sector has an enormous potential for making a considerable contribution not only to the GDP of the country, but also as a harbinger of social change.  It’s potential to engage with a billion consumers will create a value proposition unprecedented in recent memory, thus creating a new source of economic and social wealth. It may fundamentally utilize direct consumer relationships in a variety of value-creating ways -- to inform and shape public opinion, to gain feedback on the content consumption experience, develop new commercial offers and marketing campaigns, inform and shape content production, develop new methods of content packaging & distribution and optimize pricing to increase revenues.

Co-Chairman, Karan Johar said, “The M & E industry has the potential to become the catalyst for social change and a force of good for every niche of society. FICCI Frames has been the most eminent platform for the M&E sector and its initiatives over the past decade have improved the quality of content generation, skill development and stature of the industry. We believe that our new agenda will be the change agent for social and commercial development, connecting a billion people, while shaping and informing their opinions and getting influenced by their collective needs in turn.”

At FRAMES 2013, the aim is to deliberate on the growth of the industry and find ways to maximize both its creative and economic potential by engaging with the billion strong consumer base in our country. We have key international thought leaders, studio heads and academics lined up to speak on a range of topics covering the main objectives of the sector - digitization, making big budget films and being successful in Bollywood, censorship, marketing, exhibition, distribution, viability of the sports broadcasting business, the future of content consumption in an era progressively getting defined by the digital media, innovation and planning required in various policy issues within TV, cinema, animation and gaming.

There is a line-up of stalwarts at FRAMES 2013, starting from Andy Bird, Chairman, Walt Disney International, Anne Sweeney, Co-Chair, Walt Disney International & President Disney ABC Television Group; Bob Bakish, CEO, Viacom Media International, Teri Schwartz, Dean, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA),  Colin Maclay, MD, Berkman Center for Internet and Society, Harvard University, Andy Kaplan, President, International Networks, Sony Pictures Television, Mira Nair, film-maker, Dominic Proctor, President, Group M Worldwide, Seymour Stein, Vice President, Warner Bros Music, David Womart, the Producer of the Oscar-nominated Life of Pi, film maker GurinderChaddha, Jonathan Taplin, Director, Annenberg School of Innovation, The University of California school of communications and journalism, Andy Weltman, the international head of Pinewood studios, Graham Broadbent, the British producer of the Best Exotic Marigold hotel.

All key stakeholders and regulators will be there too – The Hon’ble Minister of Information and Broadcasting , Shri Uday Kumar Varma, Secretary, Information & Broadcasting, Government of India, Dr Rahul Khullar, Chairman, TRAI, Mr Jay Panda, Hon'ble Member of Parliament, Ms Naina Lal Kidwai, President, FICCI and the heads of all major M & E conglomerates from India and abroad - Star, Sony, Zee, Viacom, NDTV, Network 18, Discovery, Bennett & Coleman, Disney, Times News Network Eros and so on, leading film-makers like Anurag Kashyap, Dibakar Banerjee, ZoyaAkhtar and SujoyGhosh.

At FRAMES this year for the first time ever, we will welcome the Hon'ble Information Ministers of the SAARC nations and form an exclusive panel on forging bilateral ties to augment growth amongst our geographically and culturally connected countries.

FICCI FRAMES 2013 recommendations and projections will have far–reaching implications for the Indian M&E industry. Implemented across the board, these changes will generate hundreds and thousands of new jobs, create new skill sets and drive global exposure for the industry. In this connected world, we will hope to capture the dreams and aspirations of a billion people.

Paradigm Shifts in M&E Industry

India is the fastest growing M&E country amongst the top 15 markets and its M & E Industry is poised to gain greater significance in nationally and globally. To be a game changer, industry collaboration and policy revamp are required to pave the way for a billion consumers to engage with the Industry.

According to the FICCI Media & Entertainment Committee, what would drive this progress is collective innovation on part of the industry verticals and support from the government in establishing empowering policy initiatives to rapidly transform this sector. Within the industry, stakeholders believe that exponential growth is a function of a strong environment of creative collaboration in content, digitization, infrastructure, distribution platforms and consumer spends and a series of avant-garde policy changes which will drive industry revenues to double in value, generate employment and develop sector skills.

Strong FDI inflows will drive this growth, making India a global powerhouse in this industry. Digitization and the commitment from policy makers to keep it going will be critical, as will the industry’s adopting transparency & governance best practices to access capital.

The past decade has seen unprecedented changes and challenges. Audiences consume media & entertainment in newer ways and the advent of technology, superior connectivity, gadgets and gizmos that stream content and the impact of the internet have led to an explosion of experience & expectation. Allied areas such as gaming, live-shows, webcast, podcast, digital distribution has changed the way media and entertainment is consumed.

Indian content will find its way into international markets -- adapted and beamed into western homes on new technology drivers. Available content needs to be repurposed based on content relevance, customer demography, customer preferences and push methods.

Rapid digitization will enable collaborative broadcast production on a variety of platforms, which can be directly accessed from a billion consumers. The biggest benefit from digitization is analytics -- capturing analytics for monitoring and refining the content usage has multiple benefits such as extra revenue from the existing contents, in effect increasing shelf life, customer specific contents, demography based targeted advertisement, utilization of user data generated for developing targeted content and more.

In this multi-screen, media-rich world, the consumer is king & the impact on the Indian media and entertainment industry is profound. What are the policy boosters needed to kick start exponential growth & realize this potential?

FICCI’s Policy Representation on M&E industry

In Television, fiscal measures to ease various duties on cable, broadcasting & DTH verticals, and remedying transponder capacity would boost industry expansion.

In Radio, FDI being raised to 49% according to TRAI recommendations and resolving licensing and spectrum issues will enhance profitability as much as introducing sports broadcasting.

For the Film industry, the Cinematograph Act needs to be urgently amended, so that there are no impediments to its screening once the censor board passes a film. Also, film professionals need to be taxed more reasonably.

In Animation and Gaming, a 10 year tax holiday, co-production treaties, reduction in import duties & infrastructure development will completely regenerate the vertical to new heights.

OOH, Music and Internet too need closer attention. Inadequate wire-line infrastructure in the country affects broadband penetration. A sustained program of broadband roll-out will improve content consumption manifold and open up incremental revenue streams for content owners.

Established in 1927, FICCI is the largest and oldest apex business organisation in India. Its history is closely interwoven with India’s struggle for independence, its industrialization, and its emergence as one of the most rapidly growing global economies. FICCI has contributed to this historical process by encouraging debate, articulating the private sector’s views and influencing policy.A non-government, not-for-profit organisation, FICCI is the voice of India’s business and industry.FICCI draws its membership from the corporate sector, both private and public, including SMEs and MNCs; FICCI enjoys an indirect membership of over 2,50,000 companies from various regional chambers of commerce.

‘FICCI FRAMES 2013’ is the 14^th edition of Asia’s largest annual global convention on the business of entertainment. As in previous years, the world media & entertainment industry will be in full attendance at FRAMES 2013, with nearly 2000 Indian and 600 foreign delegates encompassing the entire sector. FRAMES 2013 will have plenary and parallel sessions on a broad spectrum of issues covering the entire gamut of media & entertainment like Films, Broadcast (TV & Radio), Digital Entertainment, Animation, Gaming, Visual Effects, etc. over a period of three days.