MUMBAI: Almost every leading TV executive – whether Uday Shankar or Punit Goenka or Gaurav Banerjee – has spoken about his or her belief that television  in India has legs. No doubt they have to speak optimistically. Linear television revenues are what are currently funding their hard-pressed-for-earnings streaming businesses.

That television is under further duress has become even clearer from the latest Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) quarterly report of telecom performence indicators for the period Jul y 2024 to September 2024.

The continued drop in DTH  active subscriptions is alarming: the figure for end September 2024 is 59.9 million. The comparative figure for June 2024 was 62.17 million subscribers. In September 2023, there were 64.18 million active subs

With four DTH operators in operation,  it’s not as if they are doing nothing to retain customers. They have been giving customers the freedom to create their own packs, they have slashed prices for their set top boxes, they have been offering easier payment terms and HD services, they have been doling out value-added services for cheap, and they have started OTT aggregator services,  broadband is being offered by them  at reasonable prices.

But lo and behold, nada, nothing seems to be halting the slide of consumers dumping their satellite TV dishes.

A few thoughts to ponder  for DTH operators:  

When will the law of diminishing returns come into play as subscribers drop off? 

At what level will the business become unviable? 40 million subs, 30 million, to service the well-spread-out India? 

When will there be a major shakeup? 

And what will lead to one or two players falling off the treadmill?

Already, reports keep popping up that talks are continuing between Tata Play and Airtel for the latter to acquire the former. When and if it does happen, we’ll be down to three DTH operators.

Also, solutions need to be evolved to stop the slide -   complaining about the gold rush towards DD Free Dish is not the best answer.

2025 is a new year.

A chance to relook at the business.

A chance to see if Tata Play’s white-label-service model can be replicated and monetised by licensing it to other  players  in less developed markets to keep revenues coming in.

A chance to experiment on how customers can be retained..

Is customer service of the platinum class a good bait?  

This has been talked about ad nauseum for quite some time; service can be the big differentiator.

Convenience  be brought in and, if possible, local programming which can be picked up from the more advanced cable TV MSOs and retransmitted.

There will come a time when subscribing to a nice plateful of streamers will become too expensive. Already some complaints are being voiced about the OTT bundles in the US. The commonly heard plaint is that they are  as – if not more - expensive than the pay TV bundles

In India, we don’t have to wait for that to happen – Indian pay TV is cheap - very cheap. More than 400 linear channels are available in India for as low as Rs 300-350  on DTH and cable TV. An OTT aggregator will have to struggle to offer as much content at that price.

The reality is both free TV and OTTs are here to stay. The question is: is India’s pay TV?

(Picture of Dishes atop house courtesy Dish TV India)