Broadcasters bet high on DTH for revenue

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New Delhi, Jul 2: On account of the perception among a section of broadcasters that media rating agencies in the country don’t capture the DTH homes adequately and at a time when Telecom Regulatory Authority of India’s (Trai) verdict on the question of regulation of TRP business is still awaited, broadcasters have started hunting for initiatives to milk the lucrative DTH platform for additional ad revenue.

A few broadcasters are already gearing up to play the same channel multiple times on different platforms (DTH, analogue) and charge separately from the advertisers. At least two leading GECs and one movie content channel are said to be in the process of implementing the new model. If they manage to succeed, it would result in raising their ad revenues significantly resulting in other broadcasters following suit.

Asked on the subject, Jawahar Goel, president, Indian Broadcasting Foundation and managing director, Dish TV Ltd said, “charging the advertisers separately for analogue and DTH platforms is perfectly feasible. Since our audience research measurement agencies still do not address DTH homes and are providing us readings for only analogue viewership, the entire DTH population comes as a bonus to the advertisers, who have not paid for them separately”. Goel also said that by that yardstick, Doordarshan is by far the largest loser of ad revenue. Doordarshan is available on the screen space of every TV household in the country, be it cable or non-cable, CAS area or non-CAS areas, on analogue, about 10 million DTH homes, of which DD Direct constitutes around 5 million homes and Dish accounts for over 3 million homes and Tata Sky commands around 1.5 to 2 million DTH households but Doordarshan still charges ad rates which is solely applicable to analogue homes, added Goel.