DTH
Star’s DTH plan high on Guthrie’s India agenda: report
MUMBAI: Star’s Indian DTH platform is a priority for newly appointed Group chief executive Michelle Guthrie, as is “getting paid for the subs (subscribers) we aren’t getting paid for.”
These are some of Guthrie’s thoughts on her newly acquired position and plans for the future given in an interview to the monthly magazine Television Asia .
Also high on Guthrie’s agenda is a hunt for new channels in India and elsewhere. The India channel roadmap includes a children’s channel (Disney??) and a companion to the loner at the top, Star Plus (free-to-air Star Classic??), she says in the interview. “I think there is a lot more advertising growth left in the [Indian] market,” is her assessment.
“In India, the TV ad market is $500-$600 million. We are going to bump up against that. If we have even 100 out of 100 programmes, the ad pie is going to constrain our growth unless we start growing the pie,” she tells Television Asia . Guthrie’s long term plans include trying to expand the TV advertising markets in the countries in which Star operates, to expand the subscription markets, and “really, to readdress the balance of where that subscription money goes.” Guthrie did express satisfaction that subscriber declaration in India had “doubled in the last three years from five million to more than 10 million.”
As for DTH, she is hopeful that arrangements can be worked out so Star can get a licence next year ,”so that we can launch as soon as possible.”
The Television Asia article quotes a September 2003 Deutsche Bank report as valueing Star India at between $1.8 billion and $2.4 billion. If we accept the upper figure, it means that Star India accounts for 80 per cent of the total value that Star Asia is pegged at – which is $3 billion. The Deutsche Bank report projects Star Asia as growing to a $4.5 billion valuation by 2006.
Guthrie, who pipped several contenders to the post, surprising many regular media observers, joined Star in Hong Kong in June 2000. Before that, she was director of legal and business affairs at Foxtel in Australia. She also worked as corporate counsel in London for News International and British Sky Broadcasting (BSkyB). She joined News Corporation in 1994 from Australian law firm Allen, Allen and Hemsley.
While she doesn’t rule out the platform acquisition route, she does maintain that India and Greater China will remain Star’s core markets. It is scale and content that have worked to Star’s advantage particularly in India, Guthrie tells Television 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.
