Draft Guidelines issued for Satellite TV channels

The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting has issued draft guidelines for satellite TV channels.

Highlights

• The Ministry has listed 11 violation under the guidelines. 
• It includes delay in intimating the ministry about the change in shareholding pattern of the company, appointing a director without the permission of the ministry, not removing a director who has been denied with security clearance, showing logo that is not permitted by the ministry, etc.
• If any of the 11 clauses are violated the ministry would warn, impose penalty or even prohibit broadcast up to 10 days.

Key Features

• According to the guidelines, the channels need not get clearance ever year. 
• Also, the permits will be provided to the Indian teleports for up linking foreign channels to increase their business. 
• For now, the channels registered under ‘news’ category are allowed to make live telecasts. 
• The rest of the channels have to get permission from the ministry to telecast live events. 
• However, under the guidelines, these non-news channels are allowed to live telecast after registering themselves under “Broadcast seva”.
• Since 1997, the giving preference to Indian satellite was always an integral part of the policies of GoI. 
• However, this time the guidelines say that the only criteria to use a satellite channel is that it should be uplinked on C band or Ku band.

C band and Ku band

• The Ku band uses frequencies between 12 GHz and 19 GHz. 
• The C band uses radio frequency between 4 GHz and 8 GHz.