Public service broadcaster Prasar Bharati’s free-to-air direct-to-home (DTH) service – DD Freedish – is on a roll. In the last two years of the pandemic, millions of viewers have migrated to the platform that provides entertainment without any monthly fees, unlike the cable or DTH operators they subscribed to. Even private satellite TV broadcasters acknowledge the phenomenal growth of DD Freedish in recent years, especially during the Covid period when economic stress has forced low-income groups, rural and semi-rural consumers to cut their cable bills. Inspired to cut and opt for free service.
A media and entertainment industry report released by EY and FICCI in March said subscription revenue for television declined for the second year in a row in 2021, with a decrease of 6 million pay TV homes and a 6.2 in average revenue per user. % has declined. The report states that free TV homes are expected to surpass 50 million by 2025, “this puts a strain on the core pay TV market.”
According to a senior executive of a private TV broadcaster in Entertainment, one crore families have got rid of their pay TV connections in the last two years. He added that this could be one of the reasons for the low viewership of some paid general entertainment channels over the past several months. On one hand there are cord-cutters in metros replacing their paid DTH connections with subscriptions to streaming services, on the other hand semi-rural and rural consumers are cutting cables to switch to Freedish.
However, the rise of Freedish must be viewed in the context of the government mandate to promote the platform. “For us, Freedish is the platform for free-to-air broadcasting. In the past, that role was played by analog terrestrial TV which is now completely eliminated,” said Prasar Bharati CEO Shashi Shekhar Vempati.
Apart from all the DD channels, Freedish offers 76 private entertainment and news channels. As of March 2022, 43 million households had Freedish. Additionally, under a government scheme, lakhs of DD Freedish DTH set-top boxes will be distributed free of cost in border areas, Vempati said.
But he feels that FreeDish’s growth should not be viewed through the narrow prism of consumers switching from pay to free. “Freedish has a huge segment during the pandemic due to educational channels. I see this phenomenon continues to grow, with many more educational channels to be added to the service,” he said, adding that the platform plays both a public and private role, and brings information to practically every household.
Nevertheless, somewhat to the spirited run of Freedish, a group of leading Hindi general entertainment channels (GECs) pulled out of Freedish recently. These include GECs belonging to Star, Sony, Viacom and Zee. This was a decision taken by the Indian Broadcasting and Digital Foundation (IBDF), even though most of these free-to-air channels enjoyed significant viewership and advertising revenue due to being on Freedish. The association ruled that the network could not have the same channel as free-to-air on DD Freedish and then in the form of Pay TV, on another payment platform. He had to choose.
Therefore, the major broadcasters decided to abandon Freedish as the paid DTH allows them both advertising and subscription revenue. Personally, he admitted that if he feeds Freedish, then its growth negatively affects the prospects of TV.
“It was a strategic call as most of the channels generated decent advertising revenue. On one hand, the TV industry has been advocating for a move to pay TV, so sitting on DD Freedish was somewhat of a self-contradiction,” the broadcast sector executive was quoted as saying earlier.
Vempati declined to comment on why the Hindi GEC dropped Freedish. He doesn’t think his absence will affect Freedish viewership either. “Freedish as a platform is meant to enable competitiveness. This has allowed new and upcoming channels to challenge the existing ones while enabling immense reach.”
Many new channels have come up on the ratings charts, he said, citing the example of Dangal. “Dangal is over there. Other free-to-air channels are also in the top 10. In this sense, the role that Freedish is playing is making the landscape more competitive where smaller channels are able to carve a niche for themselves. I don’t see it going away.”
He said as and when slots for adding more channels would be allotted through e-auction.