continued: "Localizing the Global in India: New Imperatives for International Communication Scholarship in the Satellite Era" by Aashish Kumar
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The growth of satellite-fed cable

Three months after CNN’s historic broadcast, Hong Kong-based entrepreneur Li Ka-shing launched the preview channel of his pan-Asian satellite network STAR (Satellite Television Asian Region). The company started as a 50-50 joint venture between Li and a Hong Kong conglomerate Hutchinson Whampoa. It was beaming from a communication satellite Asiasat-1, whose footprint covered 38 countries from Egypt to Japan and the Soviet Far East to Indonesia (Tanzer 1991). Potential viewership of STAR was estimated to be 2.7 billion people living in the above-mentioned countries.

The five channels initially offered by STAR—Prime Sports, MTV Asia, the Chinese Channel, BBC World Service Television, and STAR Plus—were piped into urban homes in India by underground, illegal cable operators. “It came so fast,” says Pronnoy Roy (1997) of India’s premier news and current affairs producer New Delhi Television. “It spread all over the country through small entrepreneurial cable operators in a disorganized fashion, which was the best way it could have happened.” Amid cries of “alien invasion” and large-scale policy-paralysis, fly-by-night cable operators were capitalizing on the “hotbird” frenzy. By June 1992, a mere twelve or so months after its launch, viewership in India had gone from zero to 1.28 million households (Rahman 1992). In July 1993, News Corp's Rupert Murdoch acquired 64% stake in STAR-TV, affirming the keen interest of global media companies in India’s broadcasting future.

The chaotic growth of cable is a telling comment on India’s rudimentary regulatory framework. The only Act governing “wireless communication” dated back a century to the colonial government’s Wireless Telegraphy Act of 1885 which prohibited “both the transmission and reception of all forms of wireless signals on Indian soil without the consent of the Government of India” (Swami 1997). Clearly lacking the political will and the administrative machinery to arrest the errant “cablewallahs,” the government offered them legitimacy in the form of The Cable Television Networks (Regulation) Act of 1995. The act was narrow in its scope, requiring cable operators to register and assume responsibility for providing content under the guidelines of the “program code” and “advertising code” included in the act. Also embedded in the act was a must-carry provision, asking cable operators to “retransmit at least two Doordarshan satellite channels of his choice” (emphasis mine).

As is evident from the “must-carry” provision, Doordarshan was not prepared to relegate itself to simply being the referee. It had responded to the alarms of “cultural invasion” by launching its own line of cable and satellite channels. By 1995, it was offering a full-blown “Entertainment Channel” (the Metro or DD2), it had added a third “Infotainment Channel” (DD3) and beefed up its regional offerings with 13 regional language channels (India has 15 recognized languages). It had floated a Movie Channel and was also eyeing the Indian diaspora with a limited duration broadcast on DD-International Channel.

For a monolithic organization mired in red-tape bureaucracy, Doordarshan had responded remarkably well to competition. Its reach, as Pronnoy Roy (1997) of NDTV stated, was “at its peak...275 million people, while the best satellite channel can reach about 75 million...only one in every four TV households have satellite and cable.” Given these figures, the image of a beleaguered state-broadcaster fighting off the foreign scare is difficult to conjure. A more serious challenge to its monopoly, according to the author, was represented by (a) the rapid growth of the domestic private broadcast industry in news and entertainment, and (b) the increasing awareness among foreign broadcasters of the need to Indianize their program offerings.

Murdoch’s investment in STAR was an endorsement of economic projections which placed Asia among the fastest growing economies of the world. Asian cities, wrote The Economist (1993), were “fast becoming a chain of sequentially exploding firecrackers of demand for one consumer good after another.” It was difficult not to be lured by the promise of playing to an audience that would comprise 60% of the world’s population by 2000. English was widely spoken in the area, and the number of television channels per home averaged 2.4 (Tanzer 1991). STAR burst onto the market with its American software libraries and became a household name in urban India.

“But will 3 billion Asians buy Homer Simpson?” queried a 1993 Time magazine article. India was answering with a decisive “no.” When the foreign channels broke into the Indian household by offering an alternative to state-controlled monopoly, they also stirred up the imagination of a culture-industry that was sitting pretty atop a 750 movies-a-year production base (Young 1996). Within two years of its launch, as reported by the Far Eastern Economic Review, ratings for STAR’s traditional attractions, Santa Barbara and The Bold and the Beautiful, were looking “pale compared with Hindi hits” (Karp 1994). Zarina Mehta (1997), a producer at United Television, summed up the situation succinctly: “Mahabharat has 60% of the Indian audience, (while) Santa Barbara is half a percent. Sometimes it reaches even 0 percent. I rest my case.”

Says Siddharth Ray (1997) of SPA, referring to a half-hearted attempt to dub English programs into Indian languages: “...this audience was not prepared to watch a blonde with a scarf who speaks Hindi.” A slew of Indian channels stole a leaf from Murdoch’s book and undertook the challenge of beaming into their own country through the back door shown by STAR.

The latter part of the revolution was, thus, dominated by Indian channels and software houses, programming mainly in Indian languages. Zee, launched in October 1992, led the field with its unique line-up of Hindi soaps, dramas, game-shows, and made-for-TV movies. By early-1994, Zee’s prime-time audience share in three metropolitan cities was up to 37%, compared to 39% combined share of Doordarshan National Network and Metro Channel, and a meager 8% combined share of the STAR platform (Karp 1994). SUN-TV (Tamil, one of the 15 recognized Indian languages) and Asianet (Malyalam, another recognized language) were making equally significant inroads into Doordarshan’s Southern Indian stronghold. Others such as Sony Entertainment Television, ATN, Home-TV, and EL-TV completed the roster of domestic satellite players making STAR’s opening market strategy unworkable.

The response of international channels like STAR and MTV was predictable and swift. The new “foolproof formula,” an Indian weekly reported, “was Indian concepts plus Indian execution equals neat Indian profits” (Chatterjee 1996). By early 1997, STAR-TV, under the “home-grown expertise” of former Doordarshan chief Rathikant Basu, had started a daily “Hindi-band” on Star-Plus between 7 p.m. and 9 p.m., bookended by a news bulletin in Hindi and English (produced locally in India).

MTV Asia, re-entering the market after its 1994 breaking with STAR, decided to split its unified South Asian beam, creating MTV Mandarin and a dedicated Indian channel MTV India (Hiro 1997). Its biggest competitor was Channel V, STAR’s hybridized music channel providing an eclectic mix of Indian film music, a fast-growing Indi-pop segment, and international hits. Speaking of a Channel V Indian top-ten show, Jules Fuller (1997), General Manager India, Channel V, said: “When we started out it was all international music, now we find at least half the chart, sometimes all the chart is Indian pop.” Between Channel V, MTV, and Music Asia (another Zee offering), the realigned objective was to cater to an indigenous market for music. Although traditionally dominated by Indian film music, the market for Indian pop was projected to rise from 6% in 1995 to 21% by 2000 due in no small part to the selling window provided by the three above-mentioned channels (Agarwal 1996).

In an article written for the 1996 NATAS International Council Almanac, the author had argued against the “oversimplistic characterization of transborder satellite programming as ‘cultural invasion.’” The active “local” cultural production in India, he stated, is more than likely to survive the initial onslaught of foreign programming (Kumar 1996).

Taking that argument further, not only has the local production base been revitalized, but international programmers have also been forced to approach the Indian viewer on different terms. Murdoch’s 50% stake in the most popular Indian satellite channel ZEE, an 80-20 tie-up between United Television (a Mumbai-based private production house) and 20th Century Fox, are only a few examples of the recognition of the talent-base and creative potential within India. As Shashank Ghosh (1997), creative director at Channel V, succinctly stated: “I refer to the global players as technology, and to Channel V as appropriate technology.”

Ambivalence in the new universe of choice

The 250 million strong Indian middle class voted with its “zappers” to signal approval of the new age of information choices. Clearly, satellite technology had rendered domestic strategies of delinking or cultural disassociation from global capitalist media an unviable option. However, as the dust settled in the wake of the welcome-wagon, many were left wondering: is there really much to choose from in this new universe of choice? Was satellite television merely replacing state control with market control? Media advocacy groups, critiquing the homogenous content of the multi-channel universe, were raising serious concerns about the ability of a market-driven media culture to represent the “milieu of the complex social classes” that constitute India (Sivadas 1997). In the following paragraphs, the author will discuss the various divisions in the ongoing debate over the democratization of the airwaves in India.

India’s policymakers are struggling with formulating a media-policy in a climate dominated by reactive, damage-control measures. In an article titled “Cultural onslaught: mass media, globalization and the state,” Sashi Kumar (1997), president of Asianet Communication, raises a cautionary voice against the prevailing ambivalence towards the haphazard growth of the electronic media in India. Information technology, he says, travels almost instantaneously from the industrialized West to the developing world. However, “as we demur and remain tentative and reactive in our response to technology...the liberating potential of the information technology goes unrealized by default.”

The term “reactive” largely summarizes the state’s response to non-government satellite broadcasting. The “Statement of Objects and Reasons” accompanying the Cable Television Networks (Regulation) Bill stated that the availability of foreign television signals has been perceived as "cultural invasion" in many quarters since their programs are “predominantly Western and totally alien to our culture" (Smallwood 1996). This stance has served successive coalition-based governments to cloak the official strategy vis-a-vis satellite television.

Ironically, the Indian government used the “culture” of the marketplace to dispel the “cultural invader.” Media terminology such as “TRPs” (Television Rating Points), “profit centers,” “SEC (socio-economic categories) Groupings,” “DART” (Doordarshan Audience Research Television) has become the mainstay of the market-driven directors in Mandi House (home of Doordarshan). The state’s response has been no less ambivalent than the stark contradictions between its official proclamations and actual practices. The following extract from the Press Information Bureau’s annual publication pays lip-service to the electronic media: “It plays a vital role in creating awareness among the masses about policies and programs for development and helps in motivating them to be active partners in the nation building endeavor...” (PIB 1995).

The domestic broadcast industry has largely been positive in its view. Respondent after respondent interviewed by the author hailed the information revolution set off by satellite technology. The creation of new opportunities for Indian talent; the market-intelligence brought in by the foreign players; the introduction of higher technical standards; creation of a free-information society; the prospect of starting a reverse flow of Indian programming towards overseas markets—these were some benefits that the industry feels have clearly sprung from the satellite fountainhead.

Some, like Kiran Karnik of Discovery Communications, think it is a mixed-blessing. According to Karnik, satellite television has accelerated a kind of “consumerist... ‘me-first’ hedonistic kind of culture” which actually began with the turn-of-the-decade policy of economic liberalization. A byproduct of this, he adds, and perhaps the “strongest input that has come to us from abroad,” is an “immediate gratification type of culture” which has important consequence in terms of “the future orientation of India itself” (Karnik 1997).

The new opportunities have resulted in a shifting cultural focus too. Amrita Shah (1997), editor of Elle Magazine India, feels that the advent of youth-targeted channels has altered how the young are perceived in society. “I think in India,” she says, “we did not take young people very seriously for many years. We’ve always worshipped the old, the traditional. Thanks to MTV, thanks to Channel V, there is definitely...a platform given to young people.”

Akhila Sivadas (1997), coordinator of the New Delhi-based Media Advocacy Group, sees a discernible change in the representation of women on satellite channels. Targeting an urban, upwardly mobile market segment, these channels “were not only able to show women as being equals, they were also able to adopt the language of hegemony...that women could even dominate the situation.” However, these images, rooted as they are “in the everyday experiences of the upper classes” are unable to deepen “insights about the process of exploitation” to a cross-section of women.

Other fora, like the New Delhi-based Forum for Independent Film and Video, seek “an alternative structure of broadcasting” which can exist outside “the point of view of the state on the one hand, and a purely commercial logic on the other.” Referring to similar models of Public Broadcast Service, the forum cites three essential values for the proposed broadcasting system: Autonomy, Access, and Plurality (FIFV 1996). continued

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Information on a documentary titled “Serial for Breakfast,” produced in conjunction with this paper, by Aashish Kumar and Abha Adhiya