DTH
DD looks to launch DTH in third week of June
NEW DELHI: India’s pubcaster Doordarshan, looking at launching a direct-to-home (DTH) television service in the third week of June, is hopeful that most of the popular free to air channel would join the platform as it would give them additional reach.
What’s more, according to Prasar Bharati CEO KS Sarma, the private satellite channels that join DD’s proposed KU-band venture would also be allowed to carry the advertisements booked by them without any financial obligation to DD.
Speaking to indiantelevision.com, Sarma said that formal letters from Prasar Bharati, that manages DD, would be going out in a day or two to the free to air channels. He is also hopeful that private satellite channels would come on board to get additional reach as DD proposes to distribute set-top-boxes for the DTH service free in those areas where cable or terrestrial TV’s penetration is low.
However, Star is not a likely candidate to be part of DD’s DTH service, despite the fact that it is launching a new FTA channel later this month, called Star Utsav.
Star has not been party to (initial) meetings (on DTH), Sarma was candid enough to admit, but pointed out that Zee Telefilms had offered some channels for the DTH service.
DD is setting up a DTH service at a total cost of Rs 5 billion to be spent over a period of five years. The Planning Commission-sanctioned project is primarily aimed at covering those areas of the country that cannot be reached through terrestrial TV transmission of DD. Moreover, had DD gone in for such a terrestrial transmission, it would have been a heavily costly affair. Compared to that investment, the project cost for DTH is almost peanuts.
Pointing out that DD would be unable to go in for a revenue share at the moment with those private satellite channels that come on board the DTH platform, Sarma said, “As our subscription management system gets established over a period of time, we may work out financial arrangements with private TV channels.”
This has been necessitated, as ISRO does not have additional and adequate transponder capacity on its exiting satellites, which are marketed under the brand name Insat. NSS is a Netherlands-headquartered satellite company and in recent times has been targeting the Indian market aggressively.
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.
