DTH
Pak DTH licence bidding stayed
MUMBAI: The Lahore High Court reportedly stayed the DTH licence bidding process till a decision on petitions challenging PEMRA rules governing licences is taken.
A bench headed by Justice Ayesha A. Malik issued the order suspending the DTH (direct-to-home) licence bidding process scheduled for Wednesday, Dawn reported.
The decision was taken on similar applications filed by the Independent Newspaper Corporation and others.
The bench had already heard the main case against the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA) rules on DTH service licences and reserved its judgement.
Some media companies had questioned the rules terming them discriminatory. They accused PEMRA of not allowing local broadcasters to participate in the bidding. PEMRA had opposed the petitions arguing that a broadcaster could not be a distributor of its own content. It would be a conflict of interests, PEMRA stated.
Cable operators strike off
The Cable Operators Association on Tuesday called off its strike following discussion with the minister of state for information Marriyum Aurangzeb and the Pakistan Broadcasters Association.
COA president Khalid Arain said the government had assured them that their concern over DTH licences the issue would be addressed.
PBA supports cable operators
Pakistan Broadcasters Association (PBA) chairman Mian Amir Mehmood has said that a joint committee would negotiate the terms regarding DTH with the government. He said that DTH was unfair to the cable industry and the Pakistani channels.
If the reservations of Pakistani channels and the cable industry were not resolved, it was also decided in the meeting, the PBA members will not allow PEMRA to telecast its channels on the DTH. The PBA has also assured the cable operators of its support in case of retaliation by PEMRA, the News reported.
Cable channels subsequently reopened throughout Pakistan.
Also read
Cable TV suspended in parts of Pakistan; Senate okays DTH plan
PEMRA announces DTH licence bidders; Indian DTH eviction to continue
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.
