Re-certification traps channels

Many foreign films and music videos may be off the small screen this festival season because of slow processing of certification by the Censor Board, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Published on: Oct 13, 2006, 03:21:00 IST

None | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Latin American singer Shakira or a recent Tom Cruise-starrer and even the Dustin Hoffman classic Rain Man, like many other foreign films and music videos, may be off the small screen this festival season because of slow processing of certification by the Censor Board.

In August, the Mumbai High Court had directed Information ministry that no adult content should be shown on television. Only those films, promos, music videos or programmes certified by the Censor Board as U or U/A should be screened. Adult content can be beamed only after modification according to Censor Board directives. The ministry later issued a notification under the Cinematograph Act, banning adult content on television.

In September, a number of foreign channels like the Star Movies, HBO, Sony Pix, Hallmark, MTV, Channel V and VH1 sought re-certification of their programmes. “It is a problem. We have to re-certify our archive of 5,000 songs,” a music television channel official said. The only exception is the Zee Network. Most of its film and music videos are re-certified for airing on television by the Censor Board. Cable operators in Mumbai have stopped beaming Star Movies and HBO because none of their films has been re-certified by the Censor Board.

The sudden rush has caused a huge backlog of films and other programmes for “re-certification”. “The board certifies nearly 2,500 films a year and now has applications for more than 1,000 programmes a month,” N.P. Nawani, chairman of India Brand Equity Foundation (IBEF) said.

An IBEF delegation led by Nawani met I&B secretary S.K. Arora on Wednesday to discuss the issue. “We have assured them that the Censor Board will put a system in place for the quick disposal of applications for re-certification of films,” a senior ministry official said.

On Thursday, the ministry directed the Censor Board to allow re-certification of foreign content in its nine regional centres as films were so long being re-certified at the Mumbai CBFC headquarters. “We will also provide additional money to the board if they want to upgrade infrastructure,” the official said.

Echoing the concerns of the industry, Nawani, a former I&B secretary, said the Censor Board should improve infrastructure and re-certify programmes a month before the telecast.

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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