Odisha Television Limited’s (OTV’s) Business Development Officer, Litisha Mangat Panda has batted for a level playing field for digital media outlets in terms of revenue sharing with the big tech.
Speaking at the 19th edition of the Video and Broadband Summit held in Mumbai on Wednesday, Litisha said, “I think the cardinal question for today’s digital media is, what is the extent of advertising on our economy and how does that ensure that the government is putting regulations in place so that the big-tech doesn’t get a major chunk of the revenue without giving us any royalty.”
Litisha was one of the panelists who discussed the topic, “Differentiating news broadcast in a cluttered world of information.” Other panelists in the discussion were Rohit Chadda, President and COO - Digital Business, Times Network, Atul Saraf , Chairman & Managing Director, Sabot One Pvt. Ltd, Hemant Jain, Senior Executive VP & Head of Digital Business, Lokmat Media Pvt. Ltd. The Session was moderated by Anil NM Wanvari, Founder, CEO & Editor in Chief of Indian Television Dot Com Group.
On the major factors that differentiate TV from digital media, Litisha said, “I think the cardinal question for today’s digital media is, what is the extent of advertising on our economy and how does that ensure that the government is putting regulations in place so that the big-tech doesn’t get a major chunk of the revenue without giving us any royalty.”
“In cable TV, a channel pays a certain carriage fee to the distributor to carry their channel but not a dime of its ad revenue share. But here in digital media, people pay up to 40 percent of their advertisement revenue to these social media platforms. This is the cardinal difference between TV and digital, and it is high time the government should intervene,” she said.
On the appropriate model of revenue generation for TV, Litisha said India is a tough market to crack when it comes to revenue. "When you want people to pay to watch TV content, it’s rather hard. So, advertising is the larger aspect we have to look at. As we enter the digital age, we thought guessing would be a thing of the past. But we are still guessing here, in an era full of uncertainties. And we are still debating about the most reliable and sustainable revenue stream. As far as regional media (News) is concerned, pay-tv may not be a good idea for sustainable revenue generation," she said.
On the sidelines of the summit, Litisha reiterated, “As a regional news broadcaster, our major concern is Google ignoring Odia language. If the tech giant can recognise Bengali, Tamil and other languages, then why not Odia. While it thrives on content generated by us, Googles Ad Sense still doesn’t allow monetization in Odia language.”
It is pertinent to mention here that the Indian government is planning to make Big Tech pay publishers for using their content on their respective platforms, as other countries aim to create a revenue-sharing bridge between internet companies like Google and Facebook and digital news publishers.
Search engine giant, Google has already signed deals to pay more than 300 publishers in Germany, France and other EU countries for using their content on its platform.