AP Council to crack down on ban violators

By BVS Prakash
HYDERABAD: With new gudelines coming into force from April 24, the Telugu Film Producers Council has decided to act tough with violators. On the very first day of its implementation, producer Mallesam summoned a press conference in open violation of the council’s ban on the electronic media. But at the last minute, with the council breathing fire, he changed his mind, and issued a request to the council requesting that its ban be revoked.

KL Narayana, president of the council, claimed no disciplinary committee had been constituted, as in the past, since he felt it was a collective decision of all 240 members. He hoped all of them would abide by the council’s tough stance.

According to its press release, the council has imposed restrictions on selling the satellite rights of films within four years of their theatrical release. Producers should assign the ‘rights’ to the chamber with a registration fee of Rs 1116, which applies to films under production and those to be launched. Producers who have already sold their rights are to submit their contracts to the council, and the non-receipt of such contracts would mean the films have not been sold. Hence films become the property of the chamber.

Besides banning the electronic media from covering film-related functions, it also barred producers from releasing clippings of song sequences and scenes. It restricted the publicity on channels to 90 minutes for 30 days, allowing only three minutes per day in parts of 1-minute duration to any one channel. The producers have also been asked to release advertisements only through the council, instead of approaching the channels directly.

KT Narayana told SCREEN there was no need for a disciplinary committee.

“We discussed the proposed guidelines threadbare for more than 15 days in the general body meeting and later, approved them at the executive meeting. We got the consent of all the bodies before enforcing the ban. While approving other guidelines, just 10 per cent of our members requested a re-think on the duration of the advertisement trailers. And heeding to their request, we extended it to 90 minutes for all films. There is no chance of a ‘violation’ since it was a unanimous decision, and not a forcibly imposed one,” he said.