DTH
DD’s DTH launch in limbo?
NEW DELHI: With a launch date still not fixed, a certain section in Doordarshan now thinks that starting a free Ku-band direct-to-home (DTH) TV service is a recipe for disaster and a sure shot way of attracting censure from the Comptroller and Auditor General. Especially since a business plan is not yet in place.
The voices of apprehension have been bolstered by the fact that DD’s efforts to get on its DTH platform some popular free to air entertainment channels haven’t borne much fruit thus far. The FTA channels that have agreed to join the platform include the likes of the Indira Gandhi National Open University’s (IGNOU) two channels Eklavya TV and Vyasa TV and religious channels like Sadhna TV and DD’s own channels.
In a meeting late last week, the DTH issue was discussed by some top DD officials in the presence of director-general of DD, Naveen Kumar, where it was felt that the venture would fail to have the desired effect, especially when considering the money being poured in.
The Planning Commission, a government think tank on economic policies, had last year okayed Rs 5 billion for the DTH project. The sum was to be invested over a period of five years. The mega plans were announced last year by the then information and broadcasting minister Ravi Shankar Prasad. Subsequently the Cabinet had given its stamp of approval to DD’s expansion plans.
A source in Prasar Bharati, which manages DD and sibling All India Radio, admitted to indiantelevision.com that in the meeting held last week one particular deputy director-general even brought up the point of the absence of a business plan and the lack of commercial viability of the proposed venture even though the outflow would be
there.
For example, it has been pointed out, that DD would have to pay The Netherlands-based New Skies Satellites
approximately Rs 300 million for transponder space for the DTH venture. Since the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) does not have additional and adequate transponder capacity on its existing satellites, which are marketed under the brand name Insat, DD’s DTRH service was to be put on NSS-6.
Out of the total aid okayed by Planning Commission, DD has already invested approximately Rs 1.3 billion in
setting up an earth station in Delhi for the proposed DTH venture.
However, it is pertinent to mention here that there has been no official word from the information and broadcasting ministry on scrapping DD’s DTH project. The issue is likely to gain momentum after Parasr Bharati CEO KS Sarma returns from the US next week where he has reportedly gone to attend a global broadcasters meet.
The Prasar Bharati source also indicated that the programming staff of DD feel that programming, something that is an important aspect of a DTH venture, has been totally neglected in the run up to the launch of a KU-band service.
DD’s plans to launch a DTH service with a bouquet of 40-odd channels (out of which 20 were supposed to be DD’s own, with the rest being private ones) was born when some I&B ministry mandarin calculated that to expand DD’s coverage terrestrially (aim being to cover 100 per cent of the Indian population) would need a huge amount of investment. In comparison, it was tabulated that a KU-band DTH service would be cheaper.
The launch date has been postponed once before already.
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.
