DTH
News Corp. consolidates Latin American DTH operations
MUMBAI: The DirecTV Group and Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation announced yesterday that they are consolidating their pay platforms in Latin America through a series of deals with Grupo Televisa, Globopar and Liberty Media. Hence, in total, DirecTV is shelling out $579 million in cash for equity stakes in the Sky platforms in the region.
In Brazil, Sky Brasil owned by Globo, News Corp. and Liberty Mediaand DirecTV Brasil will merge and DirecTV Brasil customers will migrate to Sky Brasil. DirecTV will acquire News Corp.’s and Liberty Media’s stakes in Sky Brasil, owning a total of 72 per cent of the merged company. Globo will own the remaining 28 per cent, and will continue to be the lead supplier of Brazilian programming to the platform. The transaction is subject to regulatory approval by the Brazilian government. As of 30 June, 2004, there were approximately 423,000 DirecTV customers in Brazil. Sky Brasil had approximately 806,000 customers, informed an official release.
In Mexico, the DirecTV affiliate Galaxy Mexico will close its operations and sell its subscriber list to Sky Mexico. DirecTV customers in Mexico will be offered the opportunity to migrate to Sky Mexico. The DirecTV Group will acquire News Corp.’s interest in Sky Mexico and jointly with Televisa will purchase Liberty Media’s interest. The merged platform will be 57 per cent owned by Televisa and 43 per cent by DirecTV. As of June 2004, DirecTV Mexico had 266,000 subscribers and Sky had 940,000.
In Colombia and Chile, Sky customers will migrate to DirecTV, with The DirecTV Group acquiring the interests of Globo, Televisa, News Corp. and Liberty Media in Sky Multi-Country Partners. DirecTV will then own 100 per cent of Sky Multi-Country and Sky customers in Colombia and Chile, where Sky has about 89,000 subscribers. The DirecTV DTH platform for Colombia and Chile will also be operated in Argentina, Venezuela, Puerto Rico, the Caribbean and the rest of Latin America, under the newly-created “PanAmericana” platform, added the release.
Following the acquisition of the Sky Multi-Country business, the PanAmericana platform will have approximately 938,000 subscribers.
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.
