TITLE: GLOBALIZATION AND

CORPORATIZATION OF MEDIA

ANGLE: EFFECTS OF GLOBALIZATION AND

CORPORATIZATION IN THE INDIAN MEDIA
SCENARIO

C.U. ROLL NUMBER: 202034-11-0145

C.U. REGISTRATION NO: 034-1211-0169-20

COLLEGE ROLL NUMBER: 89

DEPARTMENT: JMC(HONOURS)

SEMESTER: 3

SESSION: 2021-2022
 ABSTRACT
Indian media has registered an extensive growth in terms of private dissemination that has
surpassed even the country's GDP growth rate in the last two decades. With revolutionizing
reportage and broadcast, it has, along with, given rise to a phenomenon called New Media
which involves in bridging the gap between information providers and receivers through its
host of new interactive two-way communication platforms including blogs, portable mobile
phones, chat rooms, and so on. Recently, as the Indian media is broadening its new market,
there is a push towards covering community news. The paper also delineates corporatization
of media houses and their impacts on news coverage. Sensationalism, has been on a splurge
resulting in credibility decline. Thus, in overall, the current study will analyze different
outcomes of both globalization as well as the resultant corporatization of media in the Indian
scenario.

INDEX

SL.NUMBER CONTENTS PAGE

NUMBER
1 INTRODUCTION 01
2 MEDIA IN INDIA: CASE STUDY 01
3 THE EFFECTS OF GLOBALIZATION ON THE 02
INDIAN MEDIA

4 IMPACTS ON INDIAN TELECASTING 02

5 CHANGES IN THE NEWSROOM 03
6 PRINT MEDIA IN THE ERA OF 03
GLOBALIZATION
7 CURRENT MEDIA SCENARIO IN INDIA 04

8 NEW MEDIA PLATFORMS 05

9 MEDIA IMPERIALISM 05
10 CONCLUSION 05

11 REFERENCES 06
 1. INTRODUCTION
The impact of internet on how we lead our lives today can be seen in our daily lives. According
to modern theorists, globalization converge the local and global communities, wherein
individuals, groups and institutions seek advice for their problems. The most visible relevance
is the current communication noticed among different businesses where the wide use of social
media, television, newspapers and magazines has helped majority spread data hassle-free and
has assisted them to live together digitally. However, with McLuhan’s idea of “Global
Village”, propounded in 1960s, it has transformed Indian news rooms for the better and the
worse, by making it technically advanced and simultaneously impacting the contents
negatively owing to the recent corporatization where media houses started being friendly to
their corporate partnerships.

2. MEDIA IN INDIA

Media in India is recognized as the fourth pillar of democracy along with legislature, executive
and judiciary. It links the public with the government and frames up perceptions of the voiceless
on important matters. Entertainment industry in on the surge over the last two decades, thanks
to the growing investments both by the private and foreign sectors. India’s newspaper industry
are striving well to keep up the pace with online and social media which seem to be catching
up with most viewers nowadays. When there is an array of information available in the
mediums, accountability and credibility become the utmost concern. The credibility
components included trustworthiness, accuracy, fairness and completeness, and the
mainstream journalistic paradigm is sometimes shockingly insensitive to the underprivileged.
Headlines often show strong biases, which, whatsoever faces a serious crisis of credibility. A
case study proves it.

Case Study: Aarushi Talwar Murder case

The Noida double-murder case victimizing a 14-year old Aarushi Talwar and her 45-year old
Hemraj a domestic worke, Hemraj Banjade. The case received heavy sensentionalized media
coverage which featured salacious allegations against Aarushi and the suspects. The case
underwent a host of critical media trials and baseless debates where the press broadcasted
nation-gripping shots daily. Later on the police considered Aarushi’s parents as the prime
suspects. In this incident, media seemed untrustworthy, inconsistent, and not in consonance
with moral values.
Hence, media should be an active watchdog of the society.

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 3. THE EFFECTS OF GLOBALIZATION ON THE
INDIAN MEDIA
An exponential expansion in the number of television channels from one state- controlled
channel in 1991 to nearly 70 in 1998 within such a short span of time, has profoundly
transformed the media landscape. India’s growing economy, rapid growth of middle class with
aspirations of a western lifestyle and a fast-growing advertising sector have made the Indian
media market exceptionally attractive. With its huge number of potential consumers, India
posesses one of the biggest English media software markets in the whole world. The newly
evolved satellite network allows cheaper and quicker nationwide coverage in a continental-size
country.

4. IMPACTS ON INDIAN TELECASTING

With the advent of satellite technology, television has been credited to bringing about
globalization process because of its extensive international reach of the programmes. In most
contemporary societies, telecast is a highly influential medium of popular culture and plays an
important role in the social construction of reality.
In the post-globalization era, in 1992, India brought out its first successful private Hindi
satellite channel ZeeTV, launched by Subhash Chandra Goel, which rose to heights in all sorts
of domestic production of entertaining contents. There were other regional media houses in the
field like the SunTV, the first south-indian private channel, ETV, Asianet, and so on who
waited for a boost in their operation. Rising advertisement revenues and gradual increase in
subscriptions allowed them to move into neighboring states. Today, these networks offer
incredible accesses in most of the well-known languages. Cable operators emerged as the link
between the broadcasters and Indian viewers as the law of the land then did not permit any up-
linking of signals to satellite in the country.
Satellite television arrived India as an agent of Global capitalism. Most of the popular new
channels were looking at newer options to collaborate. There was a significant change
witnessed thoroughly when NDTV joined hands to start India’s first 24-hour news channel
‘STAR NEWS’. This development was then followed by the mushrooming up Zee TV, Aaj
Tak and a range of other full-hour satellite news channels giving birth to a serious cut-throat
competition in maximizing revenues.

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 5. CHANGES IN THE NEWSROOM
This 24/7 concept has been deeply western. The channels divided their 24 hours in such a way
that 4 hours was to be allotted for constant breaking news and the rest were filled with
infotainment programmes featuring debates on important yet mind raging topics, discoveries
and so on. Thus, began the urge for sensationalism. To increase the Television Rating points,
the focus of most of the media houses has fallen more on presenting manipulative political and
celebrity issues more.
For instance, the debates on Zee News are addressed as “Tall thok ke”. After a full-fledged
study of its 60 telecasted debates, it was revealed that most of them dealt with attacking political
scams, several criticisms against the oppositions, favorable or unfavorable affairs with the
neighboring countries, sceptic religious matters, natural calamities, and so on, while effective
debates in the general public interest which include discussions on increasing unemployment
rates, hunger, 6% GDP must on education, etc. was pathetically less. This is somewhat a
common scenario among all the private news channels where the media, rather than giving
people a voice, is attending the governement.

6. PRINT MEDIA IN THE ERA OF GLOBALIZATION

India, with 22 scheduled languages, boasts of the most sold copies of the newspaper Dainik
Jagran having a total readership of 56.6 million, followed by Hindi daily Bhaskar and Amar
Ujala. However, when satellite aided foreign and private television channels favorably came
into existence, the print media was hit with a revolution. In recent decades, a new shift has been
noticed i.e. from being a family-owned enterprise to becoming a corporate industry which has
also led the focus greatly on profit margins and readers’ expectations. Individual media groups
are implementing new management and maketing strategies such as new off-set printing
technologies, introduction of color and the entry of young entrepreneurial managers introduced
newspaper industry to shorter deadlines and marketing strategies of price wars. India still
maintains a strong bond with its rich national and regional newspapers. This new blood in the
industry, which consisted a part of the free market economy of 1990s, brought a shift in the
newspaper arena. Meanwhile, wth high foreign direct investments, India publishes periodical
magazines such as Vogue, Marie Clare , etc acquired hugely by the advertisers to have an active
population.

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 7. CURRENT MEDIA SCENARIO IN INDIA
The Press in today’s media scenario has become instrumental in setting the political, economic,
social and cultural agenda of the country, thereby eroding its responsibilities of growth and
education. Indian media have turned profoundly self-conscious of status and revealthe feeling
of maximization of benefit that has threatened common good. The advertisement sector, which
accounts for 70-80% of the revenue, has become the main income base particularly for
metropolitan press. What has been seen is that instead of making the newspapers rich with
news items for better governance, they are in never-ending urge to earn profits. Today’s readers
are not satisfied with traditional news contents. Their anxiety to get more readers and
particularly more and more corporate clients, the media is by and large turning to be a
commercial enterprise and the newspaper as a commodity.

8. CORPORATIZATION OF MEDIA
Earlier, the publication was made in the spirit of ushering in social reforms as there was a clear
distinction between media and corporates. Today’s media, particularly big national level
newspapers, highly target more and more revenues from from corporate houses and
commercial ventures, news contents have orientation to their business clients’ interest.
Corporate marketing methods include advertisement, misinformation, advocacy, advertisement
and convincing, thus leading to serious news getting underplayed and the glamour and
commercial things getting precedence. It is a platform for multiple audience. For instance,
Femina Miss India contest gets a highly visible audience through all electronic and print splits.
In the end, both splits have become money spinners for their respective organizations in terms
of ad revenues. This is an example of cross ownership which states Same news- Same
infrastructure-Different channel- Multipled impact.

THE TREND OF OLIGOPOLIZATION

The growing oligopolization of big media houses is concerning. With this, today media has
also fallen prey to corruption like yellow journalism and paid news just to serve certain
interests. The nafarious promotion of certain politicians and political groups, products and
services though induced articles and in the process, maligning rivals through interviews,
articles, reports, have ushered in this era of tainted communication. Of late, trial by media of
sub judice matters before any verdict and incorrect reporting of court proceedings have become
a disturbing phenomenon. In India, media conglomerate like Times group has risen to
prominence owing to this trend. Therefore, there is a dire need for a regulatory body in the
country to implement legislation and look into the cross ownership issues, mergers and
acquisitions all over the monopoly.

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 9. NEW MEDIA PLATFORMS
The technical applications of telecommunication, satellite communication and computer
communication form the gamut of 'digital media' in contemporary society. With advancements
in these, India now handles leading institutions like BSNL, Bharti Airtel, Reliance
Communications, Vodafone and other organizations which performed a key function in India
's telecommunications revolution.

10.MEDIA IMPERIALISM
According to scholars, media imperialism follows the path of cultural imperialism to a certain
extent. Studies assert that globalization imputed rich Western-nation states with intentions to
impose their values on the third world nations. Strong influence of mass media was seen while
influencing people to consume the western lifestyle packing McDonald, jeans, etc. While the
flow of information from the giant western media agencies are all inclined towards the better
interest of industrialized countries, the developing nations are often provided with prejudicial
information. As more and more people get occupied in adapting themselves in this new trend ,
the chances of battering out the existence of “authentic, traditional and local culture of India”
and localizing the exogenous for daily lives is getting close.
For example, The adoption of traditional and local songs (folks) and dance rituals as upbeat
pop music presentation in Indian movies has revived local artists’ fortunes.

11. CONCLUSION
In several respects, the impact of globalization on media management is really noticeable. The
Indian press is going through transformation because of liberalization, globalization, and
competition from the electronic media are impelling the print media to adapt new technologies,
with more professional out look and sensitivity to the market forces. Media persons engaged
in covering development stories have to turn to new technology to their advantage. This
technological breakthrough has not only made layouts better but also activated lesser-cost and
quicker production and dissemination of reports. This growth has resulted in a increase in
literacy rate and per capita income. Infact, this boom in India has resulted in need for adequate
representation of women in public and private sectors of the media. Well, corporatization is the
new truth and journalists are keeping a good pace with it.

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 12. REFERENCES

Aggrawal, Vir Bala and V.S.Gupta (2001) Handbook of Journalism and Mass Communication,
New Delhi: Concept Publishing Company
Thussu, Daya Kishan (2009) The ‘Murdochization’ of news? The case of Star TV in India,
Media, Culture & Society, 29(4): 593–611.
Chandra, M., & Mariswamy, H.K(2014). Globalization and communication policy in
India:Concept Publishing Company
Sadianasr. (2012), Effect of globalization on India television and culture. Retrieved from
https;//sadianasr.wordpress.com/2012/04/02/effect-of-globalization-on-indian-tevision-and-
culture/.