DTH
DesiTV launched in America
From today NRI’s and other Asians in America who feast on television programming that they can identify with have a new channel to look forward to. TV 36, which is America’s first and only all South Asian Terrestrial TV channel, has signed an agreement with Ethnic Media Group Inc. Under the agreement EMG will run a new channel Desi TV and the content will be drawn from the channels belonging to the Reminiscent Television Network. EMG is under license from RTV (UK) Ltd.
The Reminiscent Network which started operations in 1998 operates 8 channels in Asia and the United Kingdom where it claims a reach of 200,000 Asian homes. In India, the company which started operating in 1999 claims that its Lashkara and Gurjari channels draw high ratings. Desi TV is a part of Reminiscent’s strategy to break new ground in ethnic television entertainment. The company is trying to fill the market gap in all the ethnic communities in America who thirst for quality entertainment in their mother tongues.
Desi TV programmes will cover six languages: Hindi, Punjabi, Gujarati, Tamil, Telegu and Urdu. DesiTV will produce programmes in these languages which will give the youth from the Indian diaspora a chance to display their talent.
Channel highlights include serials like Sea Hawks, Deewar, Shanti and movies. Keeping in mind the fanatical interest Asians maintain in cricket the channel will devote coverage to the sport as well.
Anil Srivatsa COO of Reminiscent Television (USA) Ltd. (RTV) and EMG is in charge of managing Desi TV. He also hosts and produces America’s largest syndicated South Asian Radio show Anil-ki-Awaaz.
Talking on the role Desi TV will play in the television landscape Srivatsa said: Within the current scenario of Pay television, we are launching our channel in the free-to-air mode. Our goal is to expand this service to other cities through similar distribution channels. Our strength is language and we at RTV believe in reaching the grass root South Asian population by giving them something in a language that truly takes them back to a world they can reminisce about.
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.
