As the Government of India under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi began the ‘Combat Covid-19’ Campaign by announcing a lockdown across the country, News Broadcasters Federation, joined hands with the authorities to support the “Janta Curfew” initiative on March 23, 2020.
In order to overcome the overall economic, and financial impact on businesses, News Broadcasters Federation, had taken the following measures.
- NBF President Arnab Goswami appealed to the media fraternity to support news broadcasters by considering news channels as a preferred medium for their advertisements
- Relax and offer tax concessions like the waiver of GST, postponing TDS payments, deferment of EMI and interest moratorium, including relaxing income tax slabs, for at least a minimum period of three months, from 1 March til 30 June 2020, until further development. In furtherance to this, waiver of WPC and NOCC charges till September 30, 2020.
- Suspend the recent DD Auctions and continue the earlier rates. Also, offer deferred payments for the next two quarters, until September 30, 2020, as the bids placed did not anticipate the financial crisis.
- Issue an advisory for the carriage of FTA news channels under the “mandatory carriage” rules, to carry channel without any carriage or related fees by all the distribution platforms including DD Freed Dish, with effect from 1st March 2020, for a period of at least six months until September 30, 2020. In addition to that, an advisory to distribution platform continues the channel availability with reference to the status as was on 19th March 2020. The move will assure free, fair, and uninterrupted 24X7 News Broadcasting service to the public.
- Issue an advisory to all satellite operators to waive the bandwidth charges for March and April 2020, till further development.
- Issue an advisory to teleport operators to charge up to the limit of Rs 25,000/month per channel to be calculated on actuals as their operational cost. Moreover, the waiver of electricity and property tax to the teleport operators.
- Ease and relaxation the compliance requirements for the FTA news channels for at least three months, until June 30, 2020, since most of the employees handling critical regulatory/ compliance issues are expected to be working from home.
- Consider news broadcasters as a preferred medium for disseminating public awareness campaigns/information/publicity via Directorate of Advertising and Visual Publicity, as well as individual Department of Information and Public Relations at Various state governments across the country.
