The invasion of Satellite channels on Indian Territory poses a continuous danger to culture of the nation besides being concern for security and diplomatic aspects of the country. The social progress and national advancements can be thwarted if the technological onslaught is allowed to have its impact on the culture and values of the country. Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India has taken the responsibility to exercise control and render monitoring of potent tool of culture propagation by onslaught of television channels in the country.

Government of India, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting decided to establish Electronic Media Monitoring Centre with the aim to have effective monitoring of content of various FM and TV channels beaming over Indian Territory for any violation of:

• Programme Code
• Advertisement Code
• Various provisions of Cable Television Networks Regulation Act
• Any other law relevant to the content of Satellite TV Channel

In addition, Government of India, through Ministry of I&B may chose to use the setup to get the public views on many issues of National and International importance. Such feedback system might help Government in taking decisions in public interest.

The present setup is equipped with the facility for accessing, monitoring and recording of 100 satellite TV channels with capacity augmentation provision up to 300 channels. Recorded and live content of satellite TV channels are monitored round the clock by Monitors through work stations. The content clips are stored for a period of 90 days and are erased automatically thereafter. Subsequently the monitoring of FM channels shall also be done.

The EMMC is currently performing the following functions:

• This centre also monitors the logged clips of Satellite TV Channels and report to the Ministry for any violation in the Programme Code and Advertisement Code and other provisions of Cable Television Networks Regulation Act 1995.
• EMMC identifies every week, the clips to be stored for archiving. Such clips along with text report, if any, shall be flagged and stored in the storage system and also in physical removable media such as DVD, BD (Blue-ray Disk). The flagged clips shall not be deleted till otherwise communicated by an Archiving Committee, constituted for this purpose.
• EMMC also identifies topical matters of immense public importance and generates daily report to the Ministry for evaluation and for taking any action, if necessary. On days when there is no coverage of such matters in the Electronic Media, EMMC shall send a NIL report.
• EMMC also prepares and submits special reports to the Ministry on topics desired by the Government.

The need and necessity of content monitoring of Electronic Media was realized long time back at the outbreak of Second World War in 1939. As a result, a monitoring centre with was established but with the limited facilities in Shimla in 1940.

Gradually the facilities at the centre were improved and got expanded to monitor broadcasts from 13 foreign stations. The monitoring centre was later on shifted to Delhi at its present location in Aya Nagar in 1981. With up graded facilities having 3 monitoring booths and 44 aerials subsequently facilities were recording, editing, storage and retrieval of data. The facility was further upgraded in the year 2002 by introduction of e-applications to address few aspects of the functioning by way of computerization of monitoring activities where the Local Area Network (LAN) with workstations together with the associated centralized server facility.

Also earlier Central Monitoring Service (CMS) was entrusted with the task of monitoring of Radio and TV networks. Besides it was monitoring content broadcast by TV/Radio channels with reference to violations of Advertisement and Program Codes enshrined in Cable Television Networks Regulations Act, 1995 and Rules framed there under. After CMS was shifted from the administrative control of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India, the establishment of a separate Electronic Media Monitoring Centre was visualized.