Paritosh Joshi responds on TRAI’s NTO 2.0 Consultation Paper: You are doing a public disservice. It’s time you cut our losses

MVP - THE MASTERS' VOICE PODCAST - MEDIABRIEF

This, the 57th episode of the award-winning MVP – The Master’s Voice Podcast, features industry veteran Paritosh Joshi- Principal at Provocateur Advisory, in conversation with Pavan R Chawla, Founder-Editor of MediaBrief.com. and we disuss TRAI's 'regulation of the broadcast sector in general and its most recent consultaion paper on the travesty called NTO 2.0 in particular.

The TRAI report card, says Paritosh, has been a litany of failure right from the first mandate it received, till today. Across its 25 years so far, Paritosh says what TRAI has -- unlike the OfComs and other bodies of the world -- is authority without responsibility.

We discuss TRAI’s ‘regulation’ of the broadcast sector in general, and its most recent consultation paper seeking inputs and guidance on the travesty called NTO 2.0. The straight-talking, richly experienced ‘Provocateur’ Paritosh, who has been helping empower industry bodies like ASCI and the Media Research Users Council MRUC, and has been President and Head of Sales and Distribution at India’s top network, the Star Network, brings to our discussion knowledge and insights from a rich and proven professional career.

At this point in time, after a quarter century of its deleterious misadventure with broadcast regulation, the industry too would likely want to repeat Paritosh’s words as a message to TRAI: 'You are now doing a public disservice, and it is about time you cut our losses. Please don’t do any more disservice… Ab to jaan chhordo yaar! (at least now, spare us, please!)'. That, says Paritosh, is basically what nobody has been able to tell TRAI in as many words so far

We discuss TRAI’s performance as a broadcast regulator, and Paritosh responds to some of the questions in the consultation paper. And shares several thoughts about TRAI’s ‘capability’ and multiple failures across 25 years of intrusive ineptitude as a regulator of the broadcast sector.

TRAI, Paritosh says, has failed the broadcast sector because it is a regulator that was designed for working on a commodity style of product, telecom, and not a highly differentiated style of product which is what Broadcasting is all about. And which is utterly alien to TRAI’s vocabulary. TRAI tried to force-fit the telecom regulatory style to the broadcast sector, and they failed it.

In fact, even the very first job TRAI was tasked with by a judicial body – that of implementing CAS in India, TRAI failed in, in spectacular fashion: CAS never happened. It is instructive, Paritosh says, that after more than two decades of being the accidental broadcast regulator, one has to look closely for the term ‘broadcast’ in the official TRAI presence and wi

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