Although not that new, I could say that this topic had more impact on people than anything else lately.
The Levy was formed in order to reduce the influence of foreign teledrama trend, which was overtaking the local industry by leaps and bounds. Although the launching was a bit controversial, there was no hesitation what so ever on the launching process as it was proposed at the last budget report. The basic or the most influential components are as following.
Every half an hour episode of a foreign teledrama has to go through a levy of 75000 rs. Every half an hour episode of a foreign teledrama dubbed to sinhala has to face a levy of 90000 rupees. Every commercial which has a foreign origin has to pay one million rupees per channel, for one year. In which the last one had many doubts as to whether the location or the actors were meant by foreign origin. The Tamil lingual programs were not subjected to the levy.
Considering some of the inappropriate decisions, the authorities very modestly reduced the levy on English language programs which was a lifesaver for certain channels which were broadcasting only English language programs and at the time had their lineups cut down to news, documentaries and home made programs.
In the case of teledramas dubbed to sinhala, which are mostly telecasted on all five week days, are still running regardless of the levy, mentioning the amount they pay per episode almost sounding like heroes. The most important fact I see is that the path created by these foreign teledramas are most humbly followed by local producers, considering the popularity and the ratings those teledramas had. We can see more and more teledramas blooming nowadays following the footsteps of the foreign makes. The best thing is that Almost all of these local makes are directed by people from our neighboring country. Although technically the most tallying culture to ours should be theirs, I believe that these teledramas don’t depict ours. Even the local makes. They are more suitable to be labeled as action thrillers rather than prime time teledramas.
Since there should be a solution, I suggest that limiting the number of days per week these are telecasted, might be a win win solution. So the viewers may have more variety as well as more opportunity for the local producers.
Shifting to the advertisers, I think it’s a bit overdoing to have a levy of one million rupees for a foreign advertisement per channel. There are companies which are only importing and marketing products and services. And they might not be able to spare around 10 million just for TV commercials. Some of the companies are centralized to a region of countries. Like Asia Pacific. And they make commercials to suite all the countries in that region. Spending money to make an advertisement to a specific country is most unlikely to happen. Even the quality of the local advertisements is at a stake. Earlier the promoting of the local products had a great competition with foreign ads. So pleasuring the eye as well as the quality of the content was vital in order to fight the benchmark created by foreign ads. Attenuation of the quality of ads is there.
The bottom line is that as the way I see it, this levy is a machine gun coming to do a well tuned sniper gun’s work.
The Levy was formed in order to reduce the influence of foreign teledrama trend, which was overtaking the local industry by leaps and bounds. Although the launching was a bit controversial, there was no hesitation what so ever on the launching process as it was proposed at the last budget report. The basic or the most influential components are as following.
Every half an hour episode of a foreign teledrama has to go through a levy of 75000 rs. Every half an hour episode of a foreign teledrama dubbed to sinhala has to face a levy of 90000 rupees. Every commercial which has a foreign origin has to pay one million rupees per channel, for one year. In which the last one had many doubts as to whether the location or the actors were meant by foreign origin. The Tamil lingual programs were not subjected to the levy.
Considering some of the inappropriate decisions, the authorities very modestly reduced the levy on English language programs which was a lifesaver for certain channels which were broadcasting only English language programs and at the time had their lineups cut down to news, documentaries and home made programs.
In the case of teledramas dubbed to sinhala, which are mostly telecasted on all five week days, are still running regardless of the levy, mentioning the amount they pay per episode almost sounding like heroes. The most important fact I see is that the path created by these foreign teledramas are most humbly followed by local producers, considering the popularity and the ratings those teledramas had. We can see more and more teledramas blooming nowadays following the footsteps of the foreign makes. The best thing is that Almost all of these local makes are directed by people from our neighboring country. Although technically the most tallying culture to ours should be theirs, I believe that these teledramas don’t depict ours. Even the local makes. They are more suitable to be labeled as action thrillers rather than prime time teledramas.
Since there should be a solution, I suggest that limiting the number of days per week these are telecasted, might be a win win solution. So the viewers may have more variety as well as more opportunity for the local producers.
Shifting to the advertisers, I think it’s a bit overdoing to have a levy of one million rupees for a foreign advertisement per channel. There are companies which are only importing and marketing products and services. And they might not be able to spare around 10 million just for TV commercials. Some of the companies are centralized to a region of countries. Like Asia Pacific. And they make commercials to suite all the countries in that region. Spending money to make an advertisement to a specific country is most unlikely to happen. Even the quality of the local advertisements is at a stake. Earlier the promoting of the local products had a great competition with foreign ads. So pleasuring the eye as well as the quality of the content was vital in order to fight the benchmark created by foreign ads. Attenuation of the quality of ads is there.
The bottom line is that as the way I see it, this levy is a machine gun coming to do a well tuned sniper gun’s work.
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