DTH
Tata Sky ties up with MediaCorp; launches a new English news channel
MUMBAI: Tata Sky has tied up with Singapore based media company MediaCorp and announced the launch of Channel NewsAsia International on Tata Sky. The memorandum was signed on November 19.
The pan-Asian channel will be available to the subscribers on channel number 535. Channel NewsAsia will be clubbed with the other English news channels available on the DTH platform and is priced at Rs.8. The channel will be a part of the a-la-carte and is a part of Tata Sky’s English news pack.
Channel NewsAsia started in March 1999 and is a Singaporean English language Asian cable television news agency and news channel. The channel is ranked among the top three most preferred English news channels in Asia and has bagged two awards in the 8th International Kuala Lumpur Eco Film Festival.
NewsAsia’a distribution and marketing VP Chuk Chan Woon says, “Winning awards is just icing on the cake for us”, the channel’s programming is home to award winning content. The channel, in the past five years, has picked up 18 regional and international awards for their content. In the recent New York fest, the channel has bagged 8 awards. The channel has been nominated for 24 top level categories in the Asain Television awards.
Channel NewsAsia is all charged up to face the competition with the existing English news channels on Tata Sky, though the Chief Content and Business Development Officer of Tata Sky Paolo Agostinelli strongly avers that the launch of Channel NewsAsia in India is not just for competition or numbers. The opening of the channel in India will just expand the news channel list and will provide an additional source of information from around the globe for the sophisticated and evolving news hunters in India.
“Technology spreads awareness amongst the consumers. People are curious because of the internet, increasing literacy rate, the curiosity to know about what is happening around them. Our subscribers want more than what the Indian English news channels offer to them. They consume more news from the International news channels. We want to expand our International news bouquet for our subscribers by giving them a 360 perspective on what is happening. Adding Channel NewsAsia is just one step closer to our vision”, adds Agostinelli.
Channel NewsAsia’s relentless strive to be the leading news channel across Asia by delivering a much wanted content seems to make a huge difference in the eco system across Asia. Beyond reporting current issues, the channel also documents content to show Asia’s success. With this new perspective brought in India, the channel foresees a successful penetration in the Indian business.
Speaking with indiantelevision.com, Woon asserted, “We are truly proud to be partnering with Tata Sky. We believe that the platform will give us reach to people pan-India. We are well placed to provide the audience in India a better understanding of the whereabouts around them in a better and efficient way than the rest of Asia.”
Channel NewsAsia is geared up to launch in India with the same feed that is available in the global eco-system. The channel aims at providing increasing cosmopolitan Asian audiences an avenue to know what’s happening in the rest of Asia. The channel’s main focus will not be just reporting stories to the viewers but will also engage the onlookers about everything happening around in a story telling format. The other aim of the channel in India is to reach out to the Indian companies who wish to reach out to the Asian audience.
With the introduction of Channel NewsAsia International, Tata Sky has now expanded its bouquet of news channels to 96, which includes 14 English news channels, 22 Hindi news channels and 57 regional news channels.
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.
