DTH
Prasar Bharati invites bids for vacant MPEG-4 slots in 55th e-auction
Mumbai: Prasar Bharati has invited applications for the allotment of vacant MPEG-4 slots of DD Free Dish DTH platform for the period from 1 September 2021 to 31 March 2022 through the 55th e-auction. The e-auction process will be tentatively held on the afternoon of 23 August.
The bidding process shall be open to all genre (language) channels at a starting reserve price of Rs 65.35 lakh for the period from 1 September 2021 to 31 March 2022.
The slots will be allotted in accordance with policy guidelines for allotment of DD Free Dish slots, notified on 15 January 2019 and amended vide amendment notified on 30 March 2019, 1 November 2019, and 22 February 2021.
Only satellite channels licensed by the ministry of information and broadcasting for downlinking in India would be allotted slots on DD Free Dish. Only license holder companies or their authorised distributor partners can apply for allocation of DD Free Dish slots.
International public broadcasters permitted/registered/licensed by the I&B ministry can also participate in the e-auction.
In case the applicant company is other than licensee, the document/agreement signed between the license holder company and applicant company authorising the applicant bidder for distribution of the channel and bidding on behalf of the licensee must be admitted.
Successful bidders shall be required to make payments in five monthly instalments as per the payment schedule prescribed under the policy guidelines, for allotment for DD Free Dish slots. Each instalment will be one fifth of the difference of bid amount and participation fee.
Participating channels must pay a mandatory non-refundable processing fee of Rs 25,000 and participation fee of Rs 10 lakh. The payment is to be made only through demand draft.
For unsuccessful bidders the participation fee will be refunded within three weeks after the declaration of the results of e-auction.
Successful channels will be required to arrange their own IRD box in advance at DTH Earth Station, Todapur, New Delhi, to place their channel on DD Free Dish platform.
The last date of submission of online application and original demand draft towards participation fee is 23 August by 11 a.m.
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.
