MUMBAI: The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) chairman J S Sarma announced complete switch over from analog to digital broadcast signals in the country in a phased manner by December 2013.

Addressing industry leaders at the CII organized conference on Managing Digital Media and Entertainment Business in the Digital Era, Sarma called for support from industry in one voice for the digital switch over.

"We are forward looking and pro active on regulation on digitalisation," he said.

The broadcast industry leaders welcomed the recommendation by TRAI as they were expecting digital switch over by 2017. TRAI’s final consultation paper on digitalisation wil be released next week, said Sarma.

Empahsising that human capital would ride technology, CII National Committee on Media & Entertainment chairman and Reliance Big Entertainment chairman Amit Khanna maintained that media companies have to transform from products to relationship with audience in the future. He said there is extreme polarization and predicted more event based (FIFA World Cup, Avatar, 3 Idiots) things in the emerging digital world.

"We are moving away from economy of attention to economy of in attention and there is too much distractions," Khanna said.

UTV Software Communications chairman and CEO Ronnie Screwvala said that with the spurt in the number of DTH households in India, the overall industry has witnessed a remarkable growth in the country. "The industry has witnessed tremendous growth on the DTH front and India will emerge as the world’s largest DTH subscribed nation when it surpasses (32 million US DTH subscribers) in the next 12 months. India has a DTH subscriber base of around 25 million in just four years," he said.

Madison World chairman and managing director Sam Balsara cited that digitisation and advertising have a direct link to a considerable extent. "Digitalisation holds the key to the rate at which advertising will grow. Earlier for the media the revenue model was 50:50 i.e. 50% revenue from readers and 50% from advertisements. However, today the ratio is 80:20 i.e. 80% revenue from advertisements and...

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