Ambika Soni has assumed office as the Union Minister of Information and Broadcasting. The Minister has said that ensuring wide coverage of the Commonwealth Games, consensus on content code for news broadcasters, and looking into the demands of print as well as electronic media would be her priority. She said that she would partner with the media and representatives of all stakeholders to handle issues in as sensitive a manner as possible. Jawahar Sircar has assumed office as Secretary of the Ministry.

The year 2008-09 has been a dismal one for the transmitter market. There was no procurement of FM transmitters from either All India Radio or the private radio channels. Almost all orders had been placed for FM Phase II in the preceding year, except a few spillovers. The FM Phase III policy is still awaited and the outlook for the transmitter market is hence still uncertain. Doordarshan had invited bids for two transmitters, there was litigation, and orders were not placed.

The turnkey projects market dropped plummeted 50 percent, from Rs. 500 crore in 2007-08 to Rs. 250 crore in 2008-09, primarily as FM phase III licences were not issued.

There is a strong interest in DRM digital radio amongst Indian FM broadcasters. Recently, in the last week of May, a DRM Digital Radio Mondiale session was very well received by commercial FM broadcasters in the annual India Radio Forum held in Mumbai. All India Radio has recently announced its decision to adopt DRM for the upcoming transition to digital radio. Seventy per cent of the country is planned to be covered with DRM broadcasts by the end of government's Eleventh five year plan. This analog-to-digital migration plan is in line with the analog radio switch-off date of 2015. This augurs well for the transmitter market.

The industry is eagerly awaiting the developments on the expression of interest invited by Doordarshan for its plans for mobile TV services.

BroadcastAsia 2009 is scheduled to be held from June 16-19 in Singapore. We have a display booth at the event and look forward to seeing our readers at the show.