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: As 2008 dawns upon us, it’s evident the television sector in India is revelling in the developments of the year gone by and expecting rapid progress in the times ahead. The foundation has been laid for a fiercely competitive year ahead. Let’s look at the emerging trends.

* More entertainment channels in the pipeline

Not only are newer networks appearing on the scene—such as INX, Viacom18 and NDTV-Imagine—incumbent networks are also launching more channels. While entertainment channels are the most expensive to manage and launch, from an industry perspective this is great news as it means more money coming into the sector by way of expensive content and marketing.

My company works in this sector closely and we are seeing a material change in the dynamics involved when a general entertainment channel (GEC) is launched as opposed to when a specialist channel (news, movies, kids etc) goes on air. There are differences both in the scale and quality of launches.

* Distribution platforms could bring down subscription costs for consumers

The earlier estimates for TV distribution indicated that India would have under 5 million set-top-boxes (STBs) by 2007. However, the scene on the ground seems to be growing a tad faster, according to our estimates. We are seeing a phenomenon of cable operators in select mini-metros happily launching what has now been termed as ‘voluntary CAS’ (conditional access system).

This has been done to keep some of their key homes from being lost to DTH. This effort will get a shot in the arm from an initiative from the administration to incentivise voluntary CAS.

Then there are the multiple IPTV (Internet protocol television) and DTH (direct-to-home) launches. Sun, Reliance, Bharti that join the incumbents, are bound to make TV access cheaper for the consumer, a la telecom sector experience. Already the rumour mills are working overtime on consumer pricing for some of the new launches.

* Tiered service offering and specialist content

India will see a tiered multi-service offering going forward and the seeds of this are going to be sowed in 2008. Terrestrial, cable, DTH, IPTV, retail-TV (in malls), mobile TV (DVB-H, the global standard for mobile TV and IP datacast) will emerge in the next few months as different tiers in the market.