Television travels in India

Just returned from one of my regular week long visits to some of our clients in India, courtesy of the excellent Sanjay Bhat and my team in Delhi,and as always I have come back energised by not only the Indian Broadcast sector, but by that great country itself.

India is a country made up of multiple regions, cultures, languages, and faith systems, and that in itself presents many challenges and opportunities for broadcasters in terms of regionalisation of content output, channel distribution and monetisation. Add into the mix the economic backdrop of demonetisation, and rationalisation of GST, and you have a complex broadcast environment. In addition the emergence of OTT, and digital distribution brings an added consideration.

The fantastic thing however is the way in which everyone I spoke to considered all of these things to be more opportunity than challenge, and everyone exuded such a "can do" attitude to continued innovation and expansion of this sector.

The more I travel, the more I see the impact of television, including the new methods of content consumption, having a real impact on people and communities around the world. News in real time, locally, regionally and internationally has taken on a re-invigorated role in shrinking the world community, whilst live sport continues to bring people, despite team rivallrys, together.

Here at BT Media & Broadcast we are delighted to be playing our part working alongside Indian broadcasters to both innovate, as we did with the 2015 Cricket World Cup in 4K (a global first), and also to be a vital part of the distribution chain which gets Indian and South Asian content to people of Asian heritage around the world.

To use the original mission of one great international broadcaster, the ability of our industry to  inform, educate and entertain has never been more important than now.