DTH
Murdoch: Still hungering for DTH
There was great speculation whether Rupert Murdoch would do it again – raise the DTH issue, which has got Star TV into trouble time and again in the past, what with rivals rushing to ministers and getting them to unenthuse over-excited information and broadcasting ministers about allowing it in India. But Murdoch apparently seems to have been undeterred by the past, when he met with I&B minister Arun Jaitley. He popped the same proposal: allow DTH. In a different garb though.
The minister – in a meeting with journos – said that Murdoch has proposed that he will use DTH for long-distance education in India in conjunction with the Internet, a proposal former ISkyB number 2 Urmilla Gupta has been flaunting for some time now. Jaitley said that Murdoch told him that he was considering tying up with some Indian Universities to promote distance education and health training.
In a forty minute discussion with the Minister, Murdoch said that he was in favour of an open skies policy wherein he expected the Govenment’s whole-hearted support. Murdoch also highligthed the fact that Ku-band broadcasting is not harmful and it is the wave of the future and India cannot be left out of it. True, because even a so-called totalitarian (in Murdoch’s words) state like China is experimenting with DTH.
When asked about the restructuring of Star TV, he said that the process was still on but there was no time-frame for its completion. Mr Murdoch further revealed that he had picked up a small stake in a Bangalore based IT company about which no details were disclosed by him.
Murdoch told reporters that Star TV is considering going in for an for an Initial Public Offering but a time frame for it has not been set as yet. He later met Information Technology Minister Pramod Mahajan with whom he discussed infotech policy outlines, and also discussed the old bubear, DTH, and convergence in India.
Later at night, Murdoch attended a bash thrown by Star TV on behalf of Janata Ki Adalat host Rajat Sharma where even Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee was supposed to turn up.
After the party, he flew into the night in his private jet, headed for Hong Kong to ensure his partnership with C&WHKT is fine fettle and sort out other issues relating to Star TV in Asia.
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.
