'Need laws, ethics, rules in place for balance in digital media industry'

New Delhi: Union Minister for Information & Broadcasting and Textiles Smriti Zubin Irani on Thursday said that time has come to put laws, ethics, and rules into place which will help in balancing the media industry so that one dominant player cannot rule the roost.

Inaugurating the 15th Asia Media Summit (AMS) 2018 here, she said the Indian media industry looked upon the digital world not only as a challenge but also as an opportunity.

"Do we look at the new evolving technologies from a position of suspect, or do we look at it from a position of opportunity, from a position of consolidation or further expansion," the Information and Broadcasting Minister asked at the opening session.

Within the next three years, India would have over 969 million Internet users, she said.

"This is the time to put laws, ethics, rules into place which help us balance out the industry so that we don't have one dominant player who rules the roost, Irani said.

The three-day media summit is being hosted by the Information and Broadcasting Ministry jointly with the Indian Institute of Mass Communication (IIMC) and public sector firm Broadcast Engineering Consultants India Ltd (BECIL).

The theme of the summit is: Telling Our Stories Asia and More".

Irani said India was the fastest growing advertising market, which was expected to touch 10.59 billion US dollars by the end of 2018, and mobile spend was estimated to grow to 1.55 billion US dollars in 2018.

Times Group Managing Director Vineet Jain said with more than 900 TV channels and about 17,000 newspapers, India was the most diverse and vibrant media market in the world on Thursday.

With the rapid growth of 4G, rising literacy and the fastest-growing large economy in the world, the Indian media market was "as exciting as it gets , he said.

Advertising is the lifeblood of the media industry, but ad spend as a percentage of India's GDP is the lowest among the world's largest economies, Jain said. For Indian media to realise its full potential, he said regulatory reforms were needed across the board to make it easier to do business, remove anomalies in the system and ensure a fair marketplace that benefited the consumer. Today, e-commerce companies, telecom operators and social networks, all seek to play a role as major media players. But these tectonic changes bring with them new and serious challenges. A level playing field is a pre-requisite for healthy competition, and plurality of voices, Jain said.

Consolidation in the telecom industry had left just three serious players standing, he added.