The Indian Broadcasting Foundation (IBF) has urged the government for support to deal with the economic crises in the television broadcast sector due to the COVID-19 outbreak in the country.
The organisation has written a letter to information and broadcasting minister Prakash Javadekar mentioning several requests.
IBF president N P Singh commented on the present scenario, “The outbreak of the pandemic and the subsequent lockdown has posed several challenges for the Television Broadcast Sector. With complete cessation of production of television shows, cancellations of live sporting events and scheduled advertisements, advertisement bookings nosediving by 50 per cent; delays in payments by advertising agencies/advertisers and distribution platform operators, the Broadcast sector is facing the brunt of the slowdown”.
“Moreover, while we welcome the compliance and statutory relaxations granted by the Government in its latest notification of 15 April, the Broadcast Sector is seeking a stimulus package from the Government in the form of economic relief and regulatory flexibility so that all Broadcasters especially the smaller businesses can be helped to get back on track. IBF has also requested the Government for a reduction in GST rate on Digital services (B2C), automatic refund of input credit and immediate processing and issuance of Lower withholding order (LTDS),” added he.
IBF suggests that the broadcasting sector has been affected badly on both the demand and supply side which has not only led to cash flow problems but has also resulted in an existential crisis for many of IBF’s members. IBF members’ cash flow difficulties are further compounded because payments from Bureau of Outreach and Communication (BOC) and other State Government Advertising Agencies/Advertisers running in several hundreds of crores have not been received and IBF has sought MIB’s intervention in expediting these payments.
The Government has notified “Print and Electronic Media including broadcasting, DTH and cable services” as one of the “Essential Services” during the lockdown period. However, with employees unable to go to work because of commute restrictions and production schedules halted for programming across the sector, providing uninterrupted entertainment and news to the viewers is posing a challenge to broadcasters.
Singh further stated, “IBF has submitted a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) on prevention/safety measures for organised, safe and sustainable re-start of Content Production, Media Operations, Transmission and General Office Operations in the TV Broadcast Sector to the PMO, Niti Aayog and MIB. The SOP will help the sector to move quickly towards normalcy and we certainly hope that the Government would consider it favourably”.
The directions of the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has not percolated to the District level officers, as a result, the employees involved in the day to-today operations of the broadcasting industry are facing problems in commuting to their workplace. This needs to be urgently looked at by the respective State Governments to ease out the operations after strictly following the Standard Operating Procedures as envisaged in the IBF Submission to the Government and also other stringent measures undertaken by the Central and State Governments.
