The economics of Indian television shows signs of strain. Data from the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India’s (TRAI) annual reports show that industry revenues have started to slip, led by a steady fall in advertising. Television revenue declined to Rs 67,900 crore in 2024, resulting in a 4.23% drop from 2022 levels of Rs 70,900 crore, while ad income dropped to Rs 29,400 crore in 2024 from Rs 31,800 crore in 2022.
With an active pay DTH subscribers at 56.9 million (March 2025), and cable households stagnant expansion, here is how the industry has changed between FY06 to FY25.
Advertising slows as TV loses its pricing power
One of the clearest and most public shifts, as per the TRAI data over the past two decades, is in the dependence on advertising. As per the annual reports sourced from TRAI’s website, India’s television industry revenue fell to Rs 69,600 crore in 2023 from Rs 70,900 crore in 2022. Furthermore, ad revenue dropped from Rs 31,800 crore to Rs 29,700 crore for the same period.
The FY25 report confirmed the trend. Television advertising stood at Rs 29,400 crore in 2024, while subscription revenue continued to shoulder a larger share of industry income. The data suggests advertisers are no longer willing to pay a premium for linear reach alone, a marked contrast from the mid-2000s when TV was the undisputed mass medium.
Linear TV plateaus, DTH shrinks
Pay DTH, which was once a fast-growing alternative to cable, has also been losing ground. As per the reports, the active pay DTH subscribers declined to 56.9 million by March 2025, as compared to 69.6 million in 2021.
Cable households, while still large at around 60 million, have stopped expanding, and IPTV, despite regulatory attention, remains marginal with fewer than a million subscribers nationwide.
By contrast, in 2005–06, TRAI was still tracking growth in public call offices, VSATs, paging services and early internet connections, highlighting a market that had not yet reached maturity.
Fewer players, thinner margins
Another long-term shift is visible in market structure. The 2024–25 report shows 329 broadcasters operating 918 satellite TV channels, down from over 330 broadcasters and more than 920 channels just a year earlier.
Distribution has also thinned. The number of registered multi-system operators has fallen to 845, while local cable operators remain numerically high but economically fragile. TRAI’s repeated consultations on market structure, interconnection and carriage fees point to sustained stress among smaller players, many of whom lack scale to survive tariff controls and rising content costs.
This is a sharp contrast with 2005–06, when the regulator was still issuing fresh licences across service areas and documenting steady increases in operator participation.
Radio steadies, but growth is limited
Radio presents a rare pocket of stability. Private FM advertising revenue recovered to Rs 1,818.7 crore in 2024–25, close to pre-pandemic levels, according to TRAI. For context, the advertising revenue was Rs 1,775.79 crore in FY24.
Community radio has expanded steadily, crossing 531 operational stations by March 2025, but this remains a public-interest medium rather than a commercial growth driver.
Litigation and TRAI
As per the reports, the pending cases across courts and tribunals were 513 as of March 31, 2025. In 2024, the number was 458. Overall, TRAI faced 150 new cases and secured 95 disposals in FY25, compared with 46 fresh filings and 64 disposals in FY24. While pending cases before the Supreme Court edged down marginally from 161 to 158, and High Court cases rose slightly from 204 to 207, lower-level litigation also ticked up, with consumer forum cases increasing from 32 to 37 and district court cases from 34 to 38.
Judicial activity intensified during the year, with 343 cases heard across forums in FY25, up from 322 in FY24, and hearings at TDSAT rising sharply to 52 from just 14 a year earlier.
Regulation shifts from expansion to repair
Perhaps the most telling change is in what TRAI spends its time regulating. The 2005–06 report focused on tariffs, teledensity gaps and licence issuance. The 2023–24 and 2024–25 reports, by contrast, are dominated by consultations on tariff rationalisation, audit disputes, market exits, ease of doing business and survival of smaller operators.
Two decades of TRAI data show that Indian broadcasting has crossed from expansion into endurance. Advertising, once the sector’s growth engine, is no longer reliable; pay-TV homes are shrinking; and smaller operators are quietly thinning out. Television still commands scale, but its economics have weakened as audiences fragment and subscription revenues do the heavy lifting. For regulators, the challenge has shifted from enabling growth to preventing disorder. For broadcasters, the message is clearer: survival will depend less on reach, and more on pricing power, cost discipline and the ability to adapt as linear TV slips from the centre of India’s media economy.