Allu Arvind, Suresh Babu and Dil Raju are three of the (in) famous four that allegedly control Tollywood.

The trio has now taken a decision regarding the media and film promotions that is being criticized as discriminatory and has become controversial.

Henceforth advertisements for all films will be given only to three news channels: TV9, NTV and T News. The rest of the news channels (Sakshi, ABN and ETV-2) will not get any advertisements.

As for entertainment channels, the status quo will be maintained. The decision is believed to be in the better interests of the industry as it would help in cost control which has skyrocketed in recent times.

Which brings us to the question: do budgets go overboard because of production or promotion? Is there any movie that has failed at the box-office because of excessive promotion? No!

Is there any movie that has failed to recover costs because the artistes’ and technicians were paid astronomical amounts including the comedians also who were provided with caravans? Countless! This decision might not have much of an impact for big-budgeted films as they usually have stars in them.

But small films that are usually made on a budget of Rs 1 to Rs 3 crore and earmark anywhere from Rs 25 lakh to Rs 1 crore will probably be hit hard by this decision. They need every possible avenue to market their film and decreased visibility means decreased awareness for them.

The decision has been taken on the basis of TRP ratings of the channels say Suresh Babu and Co. If that is the case, how come T-News figures in the list? It has been included only because it is owned by KCR. Therefore, it becomes increasingly clear that the whole exercise is only aimed at trying to attain domination over the media and nothing else.

Another interesting aspect is that the difference in budgets between giving ads only to these three channels and probably the rest of the channels for a big budget film, is around Rs 30 to Rs 40 lakh. Can’t the producers control this cost on location and spend that amount for publicity?