DTH
Dish TV leverages sports channels to push HD packs
MUMBAI: With festive fervor just around the corner, India’s oldest DTH operator Dish TV has decided to make the most of the season. New packs have been introduced for north India with special variants for south India.
A recent study done by Dish TV showed that HD was a big necessity and an increasing number of people were keen to take sports channels. “Even if multi screen viewing is on the rise, HD is going to be big. So we tweaked and introduced flexible packs. Sports is picking not just due to cricket but also events such as Asian Games, Olympics, Kabaddi and Football,” says Dish TV COO Salil Kapoor speaking to indiantelevision.com. Consumers have the choice to opt for HD packs with channels that may not be in the base SD pack.
The operator has laid stress on sports in every level for SD packs. It has a total of 36 HD channels with several additions coming in after it got its additional transponder space early this year. Dish TV claims that it provides more sports content at every price point. The HD boost is also being backed by the uptake of HD TV sets during Diwali. The new packs have been introduced a month ago and Kapoor says that the growth has been ‘multifold’.
While regional channels that are available in HD will be on Dish TV, its second brand Zing does not have an HD side to it. Kapoor says it would like to keep its HD audience to stay with Dish TV. The HD focus will be primarily in the metros. However, a plus point is that it provides the feature of inbuilt recorder in every HD STB, without any additional cost.
The packs available are:
Game on HD at Rs 125 (sports and Hindi entertainment)
Life on HD at Rs 175 (English entertainment with sports and Hindi entertainment)
Full on HD at Rs 200 (entertainment)
Sports packs include:
Maxi pack at Rs 275 (six sports channels)
All sports at Rs 320 (maximum 11 sports channels)
Platinum Sports at Rs 440 (English, Hindi, Sports, Lifestyle and Infotainment
The HD channels include Ten HD, Six HD, Star Sports HD 1, Star Sports HD 2, Baby TV HD, AXN, Movies Now HD, Star Movies HD, Star World HD, WB HD, Zee Studio HD, Fox Crime, FX, Zee Café, Sony Pix HD, Life OK HD, Star Gold HD, Star Plus HD, Zee Cinema HD, Zee TV HD, Sony HD, &Pictures HD, Dish Box Office, Animal Planet HD World, Discovery HD World, NGC Wild HD, Nat Geo HD, Discovery Science, Nat Geo People HD, TLC HD World, Fox Life HD, NGC Music, M Tunes HD, Travel XP HD and ET Now.
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.
