‘Reimagining Broadcasting for the Digital World’ is the theme of ‘Sri Lanka Broadcasters’ Symposium 2025’ to be held on Wednesday (25) in Colombo. Being organised by the Broadcasters’ Guild of Sri Lanka in partnership with the Ministry of Health and Mass Media, the event seeks to address the challenges and prospects of broadcasting in Sri Lanka in a rapidly digitalising world.
This event takes place at a critical time for the country’s radio and television broadcasters, comprising 19 entities under State or private ownership. As a content-driven industry, the local channels now have to compete not only with each other, but also with foreign channels and digital content online.
Some challenges faced by local broadcasters are common to the entire mass media industry, including those arising from rapid advancements in digital and web technologies, changing audience behaviour, and unreliable revenue streams.
At the same time, broadcasters must cope with some issues specific to their industry. Among these are major regulatory gaps that hinder a level playing field for local companies, as well as long delays and uncertainties in the country’s transition to digital terrestrial television broadcasting.
Thus, the imperative for local broadcasters is implicit in the symposium theme: reimagine their strategies for content production and audience engagement, or face increasing irrelevance and even oblivion.
Century of experience
Collectively, the Lankan broadcast industry has a century of experience to draw from, although harping back to the past alone cannot ensure future survival.
Radio broadcasting in Sri Lanka goes back to 1925, when Colombo Radio commenced transmitting as the first radio station in Asia. It later evolved to the Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation (SLBC), the national radio station. The first television service, ITN Sri Lanka, was started in 1979 initially as a private venture but was soon taken over by the State. National television Rupavahini was launched in 1982.
The private sector’s ongoing participation in broadcasting was allowed only in 1992, ending 67 years of State monopoly over the airwaves. During the past 33 years, free-to-air terrestrial radio and TV services have proliferated.
By the end of 2023, according to the annual report of the Ministry of Mass Media (the licensing authority), a total of 18 private radio stations had been licensed and they were operating 51 FM channels. The total number of private television stations was 16, operating 24 channels. These 75 channels co-exist, and compete with, the national radio and television stations, as well as a fully State-owned company called ITN Sri Lanka.
One thing is clear. In this cacophony on the airwaves, the audiences are more fragmented than ever before. During much of the first century of broadcasting, we had a ‘mass audience’ that shared key media consumption patterns.
Broadcast channel proliferation since the 1990s and the spread of internet use over the past three decades have resulted in a myriad of niche audiences. These days, a fleeting mass audience forms only when the Sri Lanka team plays a decisive cricket match, or a sudden calamity like the pandemic descends.
In fact, the demise of a mass audience is a welcome development, because it was regularly exploited to promote a dominant political narrative centred around the ruling party or Colombo-centric perspectives. ‘Colombo calling’ epitomised the attitude of State channels. ‘His master’s voice’ was an apt euphemism for their content.
The rise of niche audiences makes it harder for all broadcasters to create appealing content, but it also opens new opportunities for coming up with thematically or demographically differentiated content and even entire channels. The challenge is to maintain standards and ethics even as everyone competes for ratings and revenue.
New century, new challenges
The real competition, however, is no longer among the 75 terrestrial channels coming to us via the airwaves. With at least one-third of our six million households having some form of cable or satellite TV, more viewers can now access dozens of foreign channels.
And half of the population now using the internet has a vast choice of free content on platforms like YouTube and TikTok, or paid content through streaming services like Netflix.
In a well-regulated market, multiple domestic and international operators would play by the same rules, thus allowing for the most innovative and engaging content to win a bigger audience and revenue share. Sadly, after more than three decades of (partial) broadcast liberalisation, Sri Lanka has not reached this status.
This is because successive governments since 1992 have failed to pass any specific law for this sector. Instead, and bizarrely, all private stations have been licensed under specific provisions in the Ceylon Broadcasting Corporation Act of 1966 (for radio) and the Sri Lanka Rupavahini Corporation Act of 1982 (for television). Such licensing has lacked due process and transparency.
Meanwhile, cable and satellite distributors are licensed by the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission of Sri Lanka (TRCSL), whose latest data (March) shows two direct-to-home satellite broadcasting services and three cable operators being licensed.
More cable distributors are known to operate, especially in the Northern and Eastern Provinces, and in parts of the plantation estate areas, peddling southern Indian channels to the exclusion of local channels. For years, the Lankan broadcast industry – now organised under the industry alliance of the Broadcasters’ Guild – has been highlighting this anomaly that it alleges deprives it of an important audience share and advertising revenue.
This is comparable to Indian fishermen, primarily from Tamil Nadu, poaching in Lankan waters, according to Broadcasters’ Guild of Sri Lanka President Asanga Jayasooriya. Such practices fall within the grey economy, i.e. economic activities that operate outside official oversight and are not taxed or monitored by governments. While the fishing dispute is better known and studied, the broadcast ‘audience poaching’ is not.
Engaging global tech
Meanwhile, a far fiercer competition for eyeballs and revenues is unfolding online. Reaching out to audiences through the airwaves, cable and satellite is no longer enough. Increasingly, audiences use web-based pathways to consume not just web-only content but also content published by legacy media, i.e. those with roots in the pre-web era like newspapers, radio, and TV.
The ‘discoverability’ of legacy media’s content online depends critically on rankings in search engines and curation in social media. In this asymmetrical relationship, global tech platforms like Google (which also owns YouTube), Meta (owning Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp) and ByteDance (owning TikTok) now have the power to decide whether content creators thrive or perish.
These tech platforms and their algorithms not only determine who sees what, but also draw a growing share of digital advertising revenues as well.
How can local broadcasters keep up with changing media consumption patterns now shifting to the ‘on-demand’ mode online, ignoring traditional programming schedules of radio and TV channels? (Already, teledramas are watched more online than on air). Can our broadcasters – with their unique local content – negotiate more equitable partnerships with global internet platforms?
These questions will be raised at the ‘Sri Lanka Broadcasters’ Symposium 2025,’ which will bring together industry professionals, media experts, media educators, and other stakeholders. They may not find all the answers, but these big questions are worth asking. I will be moderating a panel on the future of news.
Looking at other Asian countries’ experiences is also useful. For example, in 2024, Indonesia introduced a new regulation requiring global platforms to pay local media outlets that provide them with content – a move aimed at levelling the playing field between the media industry and big tech companies.
Google has expressed a willingness to collaborate, but Meta maintains that it is not required to pay for news voluntarily posted by any publishers on its platforms. Indonesian authorities have clarified that payment obligations apply only to content monetised or used commercially by platforms, and not the user-shared posts. Implementation details are still emerging.
With over 225 million internet users, Indonesia has a higher bargaining clout with tech giants than Sri Lanka, with around 12.5 million internet users. What options (if any) do our content creators have for more equitable revenue sharing?
The rapid rise of Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) adds a new layer of complexity and opportunities. How can radio and TV broadcasters adapt and survive at a time when audiences are becoming more discerning and demanding? What lessons can they draw from their peers in the region? These are among the key questions to be tackled during the symposium.
To survive as individual companies and as an industry, broadcasters will need to ‘amp up’ their imagination and innovation. They must also return to the first principles of broadcasting. A good starting point: serving audiences and the public interest in both news coverage and entertainment.
(The writer is widely experienced as a journalist across print, broadcast, and web outlets. For over a decade, he has worked as a media analyst and media development specialist, working with governments, media companies, and international organisations in developing strategies for accountable journalism, media resilience, and collaboration with global tech platforms. He can be reached on X: @NalakaG)