DTH
Tata Sky Binge expands its content library, partners with SonyLIV
KOLKATA: Tata Sky’s OTT aggregator service, Tata Sky Binge, is partnering with SonyLIV to delight customers this festive season. The partnership will add 1000+ hours of exciting content to Tata Sky Binge including TV shows, movies and SonyLIV Originals like Scam 1992 – The Harshad Mehta story, JL50, Avrodh – The Siege Within, Your Honor, Undekhi and movies like Kadakh, Ram Singh Charlie among others. It will also offer a wide selection of movies and TV shows from its bouquet of Sony Pictures Networks channels and live sports.
Tata Sky chief commercial and content officer Pallavi Puri said, “We have always believed in giving a wealth of choice to our subscribers in terms of new content offerings. Banking on shared synergies, we are confident that SonyLIV’s library of outstanding content will ensure that our subscribers continue to discover the most entertaining and engaging content on the Tata Sky Binge platform.”
Sony Entertainment Television, digital business and StudioNEXT business head Danish Khan said, “From the time of relaunch, we have been witnessing huge surge in content consumption on the large screens and connected devices and our partnership with Tata Sky Binge will further bolster our leadership in the large screen households. We have a robust content library that has a lot to offer for Binge users to choose from. This collaboration will allow us to boost our engagement at a time when users are glued to their screens for captivating stories.”
Tata Sky Binge is a streaming platform that aggregates the best of premium OTT and catch-up TV content under a single interface and single subscription. Accessed via the Amazon Fire TV Stick- Tata Sky Edition or the Tata Sky Binge+ Android powered Smart Set-top box, it offers a host of entertainment options from India’s nine premium OTT apps including Disney+ Hotstar Premium, ZEE5, SunNxt, Hungama Play, Eros Now, ShemarooMe, Voot Select, Voot Kids and now SonyLIV. It also offers three months of Amazon Prime Video at no extra cost.
Tata Sky subscribers can access the library of premium OTT apps on Tata Sky Binge via the Amazon Fire TV Stick – Tata Sky Edition for just Rs 299 per month. New Tata Sky customers can avail a Tata Sky Binge+ connection at Rs 2,999 and existing users can upgrade or get a secondary connection at an offer price of Rs 2,499. This includes six months subscription to the Tata Sky Binge platform. Tata Sky Binge customers on the FireTV stick or the Binge+ Box also get access to the last seven days of missed shows (based on linear entitlement).
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.
