MUMBAI: For the seven Indian promoters who had joined hands with Sony Pictures to set up Sony Entertainment Television India (now Multi Screen Media) in 1995, it is party time. The government has approved Multi Screen Media?s (MSM) Rs 5.45 billion foreign direct investment (FDI) proposal to buy out the stake of its Indian promoters.

The payment was to be made in stages, with $145 million coming at the closing of the acquisition by December-end 2012. The balance $126 million would be paid in three equal annual installments starting from the fiscal year ending 31 March 2014.

Sony Pictures Television (SPT), an indirect wholly-owned subsidiary of Sony Pictures Entertainment and also the parent company of MSM, had last year bought out the stake of the Indian shareholders in MSM for an agreed amount of $271 million.

Sudesh Mani Iyer, Sushil Shergil, Rakesh Agarwal, Jayesh Parikh, Raman Maroo, BR Sule and film actor Jackie Shroff are the seven Indian promoters who held almost 32 per cent stake in MSM through Grandway Global Holdings and Atlas Equifin.

The Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB) gave its approval to MSM?s proposal.

Sony?s stake in MSM is a little over 94 per cent with the balance being with private equity firm Capital International.

MUMBAI: India is the fastest growing media and entertainment (M&E) country amongst the top 15 markets and the sector is poised to gain greater significance nationally and globally. To be a game changer, Ficci says that collaboration and policy revamp are required to pave the way for a billion consumers to engage with the industry.

The trade event event for the business of media and entertainment, Ficci Frames 2013, will be held from 12-14 March at Hotel Renaissance, Mumbai, India. The theme of the conclave is ?A Tryst With Destiny: Engaging a Billion Consumers?.

According to the Ficci Media and 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 the function of a strong environment of creative collaboration in content, digitisation, 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. Digitisation 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 and 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 digitisation will enable collaborative broadcast production on a variety of platforms, which can be directly accessed from a billion consumers. The biggest benefit from digitisation 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, utilisation of user data generated for developing targeted content and more.

In this multi-screen, media-rich world, the consumer is king and the impact on the Indian media and entertainment industry is profound. What are the policy boosters needed to kick start exponential growth a realise this potential? This is what will be discussed

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 per cent 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 and 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.

At Frames 2013, the aim is to deliberate on the growth of the industry and find ways to maximise 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 - digitisation, 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.

Ficci Media and Entertainment committee chairman 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?.

Ficci noted that 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.

Ficci Media and Entertainment committee 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.?

NEW DELHI: The Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) limit for News and Current Affairs television channels should be raised to at least 49 per cent in accordance with the recommendations of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India in 2008.

Reiterating this, the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) has in its pre-budget memorandum said that it is "also imperative to align the foreign investment caps in broadcasting carriage with that of Telecom, in keeping with a technology agnostic approach so that the industry can achieve its full potential.?

FICCI said in its memorandum to Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee that it is a settled economic position that FDI is a far more superior purveyor of funding compared to other means of foreign investments, given its inbuilt long term commitment.

There is a need to provide fillip to the importation and indigenous manufacture of set-top boxes (STBs) and so import and excise duties on STBs should be subjected to a moratorium for three years coinciding with the sun set date for analogue transmission as laid down by Trai in its latest recommendations on digitisation, FICCI said in the memorandum.

It added further that the service tax applicable to the DTH industry should be reduced by 4 per cent for three years to enable it to sustain amid the multiple taxation regime afflicting the sector as some States have levied entertainment taxes on such services as well.

The industry body said the cable sector needs to be given "Infrastructure" status in order to garner domestic funding. The cable industry that has grown for the last twenty years in an unorganised manner has been catering to 90 million households by deploying out dated analogue technology.

"This has resulted in considerable loss to the government as tax collections have suffered owing to large scale under declaration of subscriber base by the cable sector. This lack of transparency has resulted in banks and financial institutions steering clear from the cable sector, thereby impairing quality of service, technological upgradation and the required switchover to digitization with addressability," FICCI said.

Trai had conservatively estimated that a sum of Rs 500 billion is required to ensure the transition from analog to digital technology in the cable sector.

"Granting of infrastructure status to the broadcast infrastructure providers namely teleport operators, multi system operators, local cable operators, DTH operators, et al, shall go a long way to ensure well rounded growth of the sector," FICCI said.

Noting that the Finance Act 2010 had introduced a new Service Tax category for Cinematographic/Copyrights services, FICCI said that double taxation - service tax and VAT - was being levied with some states having classified copyright as ?goods?. It said there should be a mechanism to prevent this situation, as it was causing hardship to the industry. This was hurting the entire entertainment industry including cable TV sector and cinema.

Under the Act, the taxing entry for copyright services, temporary transfer of, or permitting use of/enjoyment of copyright has been made liable for Service Tax. "Effectively it appears that all form of exploitation of copyright by the rights holder will attract the levy of Service Tax," the industry body said.

In its recommendations relating to cinema, it said necessary equipment and hardware for film production must be allowed to be imported without the additional burden of customs duty. The Draft Constitution Amendment Bill 2011 for Goods and Services Tax imposes a significant burden on the film industry by allowing the local bodies to levy a supplementary entertainment tax, over and above the GST.

To avoid complexities of taxation which is one of the main objectives of GST, FICCI recommended that entertainment tax should be fully subsumed in the GST without creating a window for their levy at the local level.

It also said multiplex operators should be exempted from levy of service tax on property rentals, till GST is introduced, and entertainment tax is fully subsumed in GST, to result in seamless pass-through of such indirect taxes. Cinema exhibitors should be exempted from levying service tax on Intellectual Property Rights to be transferred to exhibitors (Multiplex owners).

Multiplex operators should be exempted from payment of duties on import of cinema equipment, till GST is introduced, and entertainment tax is subsumed in GST, to result in seamless pass-through of these indirect taxes.

The film industry should be entitled to take full credit of certain ?input services? which are commonly used for non-taxable as well as taxable activities.

Asking for a ten-year tax holiday for the animation industry, the FICCI reiterated its demand for setting up Centers of Excellence for the Animation, Gaming and VFX Industry which also offers opportunities for applied and commercial and others type of arts, on the lines of Indian Institutes of Technology and Indian Institutes of Management.

There was need to lift service tax on studios developing original content and exempt Import Duty on Hardware for a Period of 10 Years.

There should be a provision of 50 per cent reimbursable MDA (Market Development Assistance) for travel and registration fees to international market events. The Government should extend support under MDA/MAI activity to exhibiting Indian companies by setting Indian Pavilions in the world markets. There was need to assist local production companies to go to international markets, collect and disseminate information, and help support the infrastructure needed for a healthy media market to develop.

FICCI also said that to promote the domestic gaming market, Excise Duty on local manufacture should be brought down from 12.5 per cent to zero duty (similar to film and music industry). This will enable countervailing duty (CVD) to be brought to zero as well. The effective reduction in taxes would be around 15 per cent.

Import duty on consoles (Gaming hardware), which will increase the installed base to enable the local developer ecosystem to flourish, needs to be brought down to zero duty.

The industry body wanted mandate to be given to commercial bankers to treat animation sector on priority. This will enable them to provide funds at concessional rate.

Furthermore, encouragement should be given to entities through reduced tax rates/incentives (exempt withholding taxes for overseas payments to foreign artists stationed overseas) for exploitation of own developed content in overseas markets.

The MAT applicability for units undertaking animation work in Special Economic Zones should be withdrawn to encourage export of animated contents.

FICCI wants the government to introduce subsidies like a CNC Fund (in France) to fund animated content co-produced and developed in India to enable Indian producers to be competitive on a global scale.

NEW DELHI: The Government has today introduced a Bill in the Lok Sabha to amend and consolidate the laws relating to press and registration of books and publications, which would make entry of foreign magazines into the country "hassle free".

The Press and Registration of Books Bill 2011 seeks to convert into law various executive orders that have followed as a result of the review of the Print Media Policy of 1955 to keep pace with the phenomenal growth and changes in the media sector.

The Press and Registration of Books Act, 1867 has been amended several times since its inception to 1983, but the existing provisions are still not adequate to cater to the fast changes in the media scene.

The Government said the Print Media Policy of 1955 has undergone many changes after liberalisation of the country. For example, this policy earlier prohibited bringing out of foreign publications in India, but today the print media is attracting foreign direct investment and there is wide availability of foreign scientific and technical magazines in the country.

Therefore, the policy has been reviewed from time to time and the issues of FDI, facsimile editions, Indian editions of foreign newspapers, syndication are now being regulated through executive orders which need to be supported with statutory provisions "to elicit optimum results and hassle free entry of foreign publications," according to the ‘Statement of Objects and Reasons‘ appended to the Bill.