DTH
DD’s DTH plan awaits government nod
NEW DELHI: Indian pubcaster Doordarshan’s KU-band television services foray, it seems, hinges on the government okaying a proposal to allow private satellite channels to come on the DTH platform free of any charge.
Fazed by the lack of interest shown by a large number of popular TV channels, DD had said that it would not charge any carriage fee to private broadcasters who join DD’s DTH service, called DD Direct Plus.
However, it now transpires that for this to happen, a government nod is needed because this could mean changes in the original cabinet note on the basis of which the previous government had cleared financial aid to the KU-band project.
According to a source in Prasar Bharati, which looks after DD and sibling All India Radio, “The original cabinet note on DTH had mentioned that a certain charge would be levied on private channels as carriage fee for those that would agree to come on board. Even for a waiver of this condition, a government okay is needed and it is being awaited.” Interestingly, the whole game plan involving DD’s DTH forays seems to be flawed, including the communication strategy, and this is being increasingly realized in Prasar Bharati, whose secretariat is finding itself helpless as various regional centres of DD have been announcing DTH plans without co-ordination.
“We understand that there is a flaw in the strategy as various regional kendras (centres) are announcing that they are launching DTH services. How can regional centres launch a DTH service? What was originally planned that each regional centre would do its bit to create the hype for the DTH service. But now, it seems, every centre is communicating the wrong things to the media,” the Prasar Bharati source said.
What is the information and broadcasting ministry doing on DD’s much-hyped-but-still-to-be-seen DTH service? Ministerial sources said that the file is being studied as the government would like to wait and see if the broadcast and cable regulator recommends, as part of an overall report, that all TV channels must be made available to all platforms on a non-discriminatory basis, including DTH.
Since July, DD has been heavily advertising on its network that its DTH service was to be launched soon. As of today, no final date has been fixed for the formal launch. The last date that Prasar Bharati was looking at was 15 September, which has come and gone.
DTH
Prasar Bharati’s WAVES earns Rs 2.9 crore in first year
Platform scales content, users but monetisation gaps limit revenue growth.
MUMBAI: Big waves, small ripples at least for now. When Prasar Bharati launched its OTT platform WAVES at the 55th International Film Festival of India in November 2024, it pitched a bold vision: a homegrown rival to global and domestic streaming giants, blending video, audio, gaming and commerce into a single digital ecosystem. Five months into FY2024–25, however, the platform’s revenue stands at just Rs 2.90 crore, a figure that underscores the gap between ambition and monetisation.
On paper, WAVES looks anything but modest. The platform has ingested 13,608 titles, totalling 9,495 hours of content, with over 13,000 titles already live. It has streamed more than 575 live events from the Mahakumbh Amrit Snan and the 76th Republic Day parade to the Hockey India League, Kabaddi World Cup and Mann Ki Baat while offering 74 live TV channels and 12 radio channels. With over 10 lakh registered users and more than 200 content partners onboarded, the scale resembles that of a fully operational streaming service rather than a pilot project.
The architecture supporting this scale is equally robust. Built under Prasar Bharati’s Central Archives vertical, WAVES runs on a cloud-based infrastructure with DRM, encryption and an integrated analytics dashboard. It includes dedicated units for content ingestion, quality control, publishing, graphics, marketing and billing, and is distributed across platforms such as OTTplay, Tata Play and BSNL. The offering extends beyond video to include audio-on-demand, e-games and even e-commerce via ONDC integration.
Yet, the numbers reveal a core disconnect. Despite its scale, WAVES generated just Rs 2.90 crore in a market where India’s OTT industry crossed Rs 23,000 crore in 2024. A key bottleneck lies in monetisation infrastructure: subscriptions cannot currently be purchased within the app and must be completed via an external website. In a mobile-first country where over 95 per cent of OTT consumption happens on smartphones, this extra step creates friction that most users are unlikely to overcome.
Ironically, content is not the problem, it is the platform’s biggest strength. Prasar Bharati holds one of the world’s richest broadcast archives, including 45,154 hours of digitised Akashvani programming and 35,723 hours from Doordarshan. For WAVES alone, over 3,800 hours of archival content have been made OTT-ready, including classics such as Ramayan and Shaktimaan, alongside rare cultural recordings and historical broadcasts.
There are early signs that this library holds commercial potential. Revenue from archival content licensing rose sharply to Rs 3.38 crore in FY24, up from Rs 67 lakh the previous year. Meanwhile, free digital platforms continue to drive massive reach, the PB Archives Youtube channel clocked 119.78 million views and added 4,02,000 subscribers in FY2024–25, crossing 1.7 million in total, while DD News has over 5.84 million subscribers.
That, however, presents a strategic dilemma. While free distribution builds scale, it also conditions audiences to expect content at zero cost making it harder to transition to paid models. WAVES, designed as a hybrid AVOD-SVOD platform with advertising and subscription layers, is yet to fully crack this balance.
The broader challenge is not technological but strategic. In an ecosystem dominated by platforms offering seamless payments, aggressive pricing and high-budget originals, WAVES is still bridging the gap between being a content repository and a commercially viable product.
For now, the platform reflects both promise and paradox. It has the scale, the content and the infrastructure but until monetisation catches up, WAVES remains less a revenue engine and more a digital showcase of what India’s public broadcaster could become.
