Advanced Television

India’s Dish TV’s carriage rate card

November 19, 2013

By Chris Forrester

India’s free-to-air broadcasters as well as those seeking to secure fees from subscribers can now tap into Dish TV’s huge pay-TV market helped by an official rate card which quotes a basic entry fee of Rupees 2 million a month (about $32,000). The sum is an all-inclusive fee and covers carriage in either standard or high definition, as well as transponder costs, ingest/turnaround, processing and encryption/subscriber management system costs.

However, the rate card’s basic fee, quoted by India’s Television Post news-blog, is only the start of the overall charges. Add in an EPG listing and the fee rises another R150,000 a month. If broadcasters want carriage within Dish TV’s ‘Logical Channel Numbering’ scheme add in another R1.25 million. To be part of Dish TV’s various family and premium bundles costs more cash again, as well as gaining coverage to its separate North India bouquet and South India bundles will cost a few extra millions.

Currently Dish TV has structured deals in place (probably with most elements of the above fee structure) with players like IndiaCast, which is the j-v between Viacom, Disney and TV 18 and which expires in January. A similar distribution deal with MediaPro (which includes the Star, Turner and Zee bundles of channels) also expires next year, says Television Post.

Dish TV achieved revenues of R350 million this year, and reportedly is seeking to grow that sum to R500 million next year.

Categories: Articles, Broadcast, FTA