DTH
Tata Sky launches interactive comedy service in partnership with Shemaroo Entertainment
MUMBAI: Tata Sky has added a new service to its diverse bouquet of content – Tata Sky Comedy. The DTH player has partnered with Shemaroo Entertainment as content partner, powered by Comedywalas. The tagline for this new service is ‘Haso Khulke’. Tata Sky had recently launched two interactive services – Actve Fitness in association with Suniel Shetty and Dance Studio in partnership with Madhuri Dixit Nene and Dr. Shriram Nene’s RnM Moving Pictures.
Tata Sky Comedy will initially be available to its subscribers primarily on TV and can also move to digital platforms in the future. The viewers can also see the popular comic strip Suppandi refreshed daily.
Launched today on 8 March 2016, Tata Sky’s latest addition aims to be a single destination for all formats of Hindi comedy content. The launch event also provided a glimpse of the service, as unfolded by stand-up comedians Sugandha Mishra and Sahil Khattar who are also a part of the service.
“We wanted a guide, an anchor with a youthful appeal who could carry the audience for this new service. Sugandha and Sahil are youth icons and are perfect to be a part of our service”, said Shemaroo Entertainment director Hiren Gada.
Priced at Rs 59, the standalone service aims at a non-stop clean entertainment for all age groups, across geographical and socioeconomic boundaries with a diverse range of formats exclusively for its subscribers.
Talking about the launch, Tata Sky chief commercial officer Pallavi Puri said, “With Tata Sky Comedy we aim to provide a fun way to relax for our subscribers. Comedy is a genre that the audiences have a huge appetite for, and we believe there is currently a gap for a singular destination for all types of Hindi comedy content. We wish to fill that gap with this latest offering from Tata Sky. In partnership with Shemaroo, it is our attempt to provide a one-stop shop for popular comedy formats that will be available to subscribers 24 hours a day. ”
The 24×7 ad free service based on a subscription only basis, will be free for the first 10 days for its customers. Placed at channel 102, the interactive service has a diverse range of formats like Bollywood Tadka which is an overview of Bollywood mixed with comedy. This comedy service features interesting formats like Scene Smaash, Pehchaan Kaun, Dekh Gaana Dekh, Filmy Fankaar, Pocket Films with Gauri, etc.
Tata Sky Comedy will have all time classics, will highlight jokes, fun quizzes and comic strips and will telecast all-time favourite shows like Zabaan Sambhalke, Office Office, Ye Jo Hai Zindagi, Nukkad, etc. Interesting and eye grabbing short snippets like Waiting Lounge, Fact de India, Paanch Namune, Sher Bazaar, No News Network, etc., will be made available to the customers under Comedy Fatafat hour. One of the formats, The Weekend Special, will feature the best of Comedy Circus for an hour every Saturday and Sunday at 9 pm and 10 pm.
Talking about his company’s expertise, Gada said, “We’re very excited to launch the comedy service with Tata Sky. Being a leading content aggregator and owner, our continuous efforts are to serve our audiences in new and innovative ways. Comedywalas is one such initiative from Shemaroo. Given the fact that comedy is such a universal entertainment genre, our efforts will be to aggregate, produce and curate some highly entertaining and fun programming.”
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.
