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THE NATION:
TV CHANNELS
The
Home Run
The
Government finally clears direct-to-home telecasts but the revolution
may take time as investments needed are huge and the market is limited
By
Methil Renuka
It's
been in the air for over three years now and was in danger of being blown
away altogether. Direct-To-Home (DTH) telecasting in India had always
been viewed with needless trepidation in government circles. Its clearance
was put off by I.K. Gujral's government in July 1997 for "national
security" reasons. The ban came in the wake of Australian media baron
Rupert Murdoch demonstrating Star TV's capacity to provide such a service
to its Indian viewers. So when DTH telecasting was finally cleared by
the Union Cabinet on November 2, albeit with a few hard riders much of
the initial enthusiasm was missing.
 |
| Swaraj
ended the three-year wait for the DTH wagoneers |
It is certainly
not because of the technology. Fibre optics with its promise of convergence
of the three Cs-cable, communication and computer-may beckon many Indian
homes. But DTH is still the ultimate power tool for television viewing.
It is to entertainment what the pill was to sexual freedom for women in
the 1960s. No more would you be dependent on the vagaries of cable operators
with their fuzzy images and their annoying choice of channels. Now with
just a pizza-sized dish antennae and a swipe card in hand the world is
literally at your fingertips. You can punch in a dazzling array of channels
and receive pictures with awesome clarity.
The real
problem is that in the intervening three years a lot has changed since
Star TV, Sun and Zee eyed the DTH market. Now there are more than a dozen
players jostling to grab a share. Kalanidhi Maran, CEO of the Chennai-based
Sun TV, who set up his own earth station in March this year in anticipation
of the government's clearance points out: "The ball game has changed
today. There are more players now and the winners will be the ones who
have the most number of specialised and exclusive channels and the best
pricing. But it remains to be seen if DTH will be cost-effective."
The Real
Nub: The start up cost to get the service at home would be as much
as Rs 25,000 for the decoder set and the dish antenna alone. That would
immediately dissuade much of the 37 million cable TV subscribers across
the country. Since DTH offers pay per view channels the average monthly
subscription could be as high as Rs 1,000 for each house as compared to
the Rs 100 to Rs 200 that most cable operators charge.
That's why
the lucrative cable industry insists it's not rattled by the move. Says
Rakesh Dutta, general secretary of the Cable Networks Association: "DTH
cannot usurp the cable industry. It won't be able to match even one-tenth
of our services." Even the most optimistic DTH supporters expect
to capture only three million subscribers in two years.
If Anil
Malhotra who is assistant VP, technical at Incablenet, a cable service
provider confidently predicts "DTH will never replace cable in India"
there are other reasons. Most of those in the race to set up DTH services
say that the government's licence fee of Rs 10 crore apart from a 10 per
cent share of the annual revenue is a dampener.
Also the
initial investment cost for setting up the service is high. Apart from
buying or hiring satellite transponders, service providers would have
to set up earth stations to receive the signals and then set up an elaborate
subscription management system. That would mean that the DTH stage is
open to only the big boys such as Star TV, Zee, Sun, Reliance and Sony.
That's why the industry sighed with relief when the Government allowed
foreign investment up to 49 per cent.
Even after
setting up the infrastructure, the big players would have to ensure that
they provide quality channels that could keep viewers hooked. At the same
time they cannot ignore cable TV's mass reach that will grab much of the
adspend. So the promise of a revolution that DTH holds may be delayed.
Hang on to your cable operator till then.
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