DTH
Zee’s Dish TV shifting to NSS-6 from Insat in July
NEW DELHI: Zee Telefilms and ASC Enterprise-promoted Dish TV, India’s first KU-band DTH televisions service, will hop on to NSS-6 from an Insat satellite in July.
The change in the satellite will be done simultaneously with the addition of more channels to the service, bringing the total number of channels on offer to 84.
Speaking to indiantelevision.com, a senior executive of the Subhash Chandra-promoted Zee Telefilms said, “To increase the channel offering, we needed more transponder capacity that was not available with Isro (Indian Space Research Organisation). So, we were advised to go on to NSS-6.”
Isro, a government organisation that manages operation and transponder lease of Insat series of satellites, has also undertaken a similar deal with the Europe-based NewSky Satellite for transponder space for Indian pubcaster
Doordarshan’s proposed KU-band DTH service.
Dish TV, which unveiled ESPN and Star Sports some months back on the platform, has already added a few channels to its stable since then, like Trace from MCM and Euro Sports. Media reports have also quoted Sony Entertainment Television India executives saying that negotiations are on with Zee for Sony channels to join the Dish TV platform.
In addition, with the increased number of offerings, Dish TV is in the process of finalising a pricing structure for various tiers of service for the service. The subscription fee for the basic tier of DTH service would be kept around Rs 100 (approximately $2.5).
The Zee executive said that as the channels and value-added services increase, there has to be different pricing for various tiers as one single price would not make the business commercially viable.
“The various price structures are being worked out and would be put in place in the next quarter,” the Zee executive said.
Dish TV claims to have got 140,000 DTH boxes out in the market, but this need not necessarily mean that the total number of subscribers would also be the same.
Gearing up for impending competition from the proposed Tata-Star combine DTH service, Dish TV is looking at doing some value additions to the service. One such service being looked at is high-speed Internet connections through satellite to a DTH subscriber, which would come at a cost. The Internet service is likely to be introduced in the last quarter of 2004.
Incidentally, ASC Enterprise, a Subhash Chandra-promoted company that holds the licence for DTH service in the country, has dropped its plan to put into orbit a customised satellite. The satellite project was being implemented by an ASC subsidiary, Agrani Satellite Services Ltd. The plan now is to buy off the shelf an existing and orbiting satellite.
Dish TV is a venture of Essel Group, promoted by Chandra. The group’s business interests include media programming, broadcasting and distribution, packaging, entertainment, online gaming and telecom, all of which are undertaken in close synergies with Zee Telefilms, Siticable, Playwin, E-city, Esselworld, Intrex, Cyquator, Essel Propack and ITZ Cash Card.
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.
