DTH
DTH operators write to TRAI over broadcasters offering pay channels on DD Free Dish
Mumbai: Direct-to-home (DTH) service providers including Tata Sky and Airtel Digital TV have written to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) asking the telecom regulator to address the issue of broadcasters making their pay channels available on Prasar Bharati’s FTA platform DD Free Dish.
According to the DTH players, this goes against the current tariff regime which mandates the designation of channels as either pay or FTA and prohibits their bundling together. Tata Sky and DTH players want that such designation remains constant across distribution platforms, a matter they had requested the TRAI to look into earlier as well, but to no avail.
It is being alleged that despite the above mandates and guidelines, broadcasters such as Zee, Sony, Star, Viacom18 and others continue to exploit loopholes to make their second-tier channels like Zee Anmol, Sony Pal, Star Utsav and Colors Rishtey available for free on DD Free Dish in order to increase their reach beyond the pay universe and get more advertising dollars. However, the same channels are present on private distribution platforms as pay channels, in accordance with their MRP filing with TRAI.
DTH operators say that the practice is highly discriminatory as not only are the private DPOs paying the broadcasters to distribute these channels, but also charging subscribers for the same. On the other hand, DD Free Dish receives a license fee for making them freely available to viewers.
Reviving their demand, the DTH players have requested the TRAI to level the playing field for the public service broadcaster and themselves in this regard.
Tata Sky CEO Harit Nagpal says that he is not against these channels being free nor is he asking the broadcasters to pull them off DD Free Dish, but asking for a level-playing field and parity. “We are just demanding that if these channels are available as free on DD Free Dish, it should also be the case on my platform. There are about 20 FTA channels on DD Free Dish that are being offered to my viewers at a price anywhere between ten paise – three rupees, which is highly discriminatory,” he says.
Responding to the TRAI’s contention of DD Free Dish not being covered under NTO, he says that the regulator misses the point here. “This is not about DD Free Dish, but the channels,” states Nagpal.
A senior official from a leading cable operator remarks, “I am not sure but the broadcasters may be taking advantage of a legal loophole where TRAI cannot regulate DD Free Dish which comes under Prasar Bharati. A channel that is allotted a slot on DD Free Dish may immediately gain 50 GRPs while FTA channels not on the free DTH players are struggling at seven GRPs. That’s the advantage of DD Free Dish. Broadcasters slowly want to move pay-TV subscribers away from the value chain. In urban markets, they are going direct-to-customer by distributing their channels on their OTT platforms and in rural markets, they are opting for DD Free Dish. This practice boosts both advertising and subscription revenues for broadcasters.”
Calling the unfair practice a “double whammy” for DPOs, he reveals that TV broadcasters are ready to pay Rs 8-16 crore in advance to be allotted a slot on DD Free Dish. “They are paying an enormous carriage fee and not charging a subscription fee for their pay channels on DD Free Dish whereas on cable and DTH operators they are paying much lower carriage fees and are charging a subscription fee. It’s a complete double negative.”
It is important to note here that as per the new tariff order, 1.0 carriage fees on DTH and cable operators are capped at four lakh per month. According to TRAI performance indicator report Jan-March, DTH subscribers declined by 1.4 million at the end of March.
The unnatural growth in the number of pay channels on DD Free Dish has unbalanced the equation for cable and DTH operators. “Reports say that 40-50 per cent of the urban markets are already on OTT platforms. The rural market is still growing where broadcasters are trying to cut out ‘middle men’ like cable and DTH operators. This will slowly lead to the decline of the industry in five to ten years,” he reckons.
Like Nagpal, he also demands that either the broadcasters should pull their pay channels from DD Free Dish or they should make those channels FTA for all DPOs. If there is parity on all platforms, no one will complain.
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.
