Censors plan to 'clean up' TV

After barring risque music videos, censors now plan to ban movies with A certificate, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Jul 24, 2006, 02:23:00 IST

None | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The censor board is all set to make the television family-friendly. After barring risqué music videos, it now plans to ban movies with A certificate and banish those with UA certificate (parental guidance for children below 12) to late nights.

So if the scissorhands go into motion, do not expect to catch Rang De Basanti or The Matrix Revolutions in primetime. And there will be no more re-runs of Pretty Woman.

Sources said according to the proposal, movies with A certificate would not be shown on TV in their original format. These films will be telecast only if producers remove portions of adult content and get them re-certified as U or UA by the censor board. The UA movies will only be shown late at night, after children are presumably in bed.

As of now, channels telecast English movies with A certificate after removing "objectionable" scenes.

The Central Board for Film Certification had recently banned from TV music videos and even promos of films certified as A or UA. But now the producers of these videos will have to give a declaration that these would not be telecast on TV.

Asked when the new censorship would come into effect, a board official said, "Very shortly." He said the board was talking to channels regarding the proposal but an agreement would not be easy. The reason? The movies -- Hindi, English and regional -- bring huge revenue by way of ads.

If the board's proposal comes into force, the channels will not be able to show at prime time about half the Hindi movies and more than 80 per cent foreign films released in 2005.

Last year, about 23 per cent Hindi films and about 50 per cent foreign films were certified A. About 20 per cent Hindi films and 36 per cent foreign films were in the UA category. "We will lose revenue as these movies can be shown only at late night when viewership is less," said an industry source.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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