IndianMascot
Core Member
RC Venkateish, CEO, Dish TV India Ltd, feels broadcasters are getting unfair share of revenues from the direct-to-home industry by not paying carriage fees to DTH companies. In conversation with Ashish K Tiwari, he speaks about new industry initiatives, company's performance in the September quarter, new offerings for the market and more. Edited excerpts...
On pushing for carriage fees for DTH operators.
This is something we have been pushing back at the broadcasters because ultimately they are getting an unfair share of their revenues from a DTH platform. While DTH contributes only about 27%-28% of the subscriber base it is contributing almost 60% of the revenues. This is without taking the carriage subsidy and if one takes that into account as well then broadcasters are basically living off DTH.
Now that obviously is not a sustainable situation and there are many industry initiatives that we are ourselves taking to push back on this unfair balance and we hope that, that will correct. While Dish TV may have initiated it, ultimately it is a collective effort from the industry players.
On how are the broadcasters reacting to this.
It is still early days and we are hoping to get some equity to the entire arrangement.
On possible carriage fee structure if this initiative gets through.
There are basically two options. The broadcasters will either have to reduce carriage payout to the multi-system operators (MSOs) thus bringing uniformity in the industry or end up paying carriage fees to DTH players. The choice is theirs. They need to be fair and cannot rob Peter to pay Paul.
On 164,000 new subscriber additions in the July-September quarter.
Given the current business environment, I think it’s a pretty good number. The market has been little soft for various reasons. The penetration of digital boxes either through cable or DTH has been very high in the phase I and II digitisation and any additional demand will only be replacement demand and phase III and IV will only happen by end of next year. As for covering the rural markets is concerned there is no urgency considering there is a lot of time still left.
So we can expect the market to be sort of tempered down for the next 2-3 quarters months or so. Also, overall macro scenario in the second quarter was very dull with inflation spiking, rupee depreciation etc. So in the overall scheme of things we are quite pleased that despite all the challenges we have managed to add the same number of subscribers that we did last year.
On further price hikes for set-top-boxes and or subscription packages.
We have been taking the price up at every available opportunity and certainly we will be looking to pass on increasing cost and will definitely have some movement in price at least by the fourth quarter.
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