India is country with variety of Culture and Geography.about 70% of Indian lives in Rural and Semi-Urban areas in which cable network are not available.Also most of people living in rural area can't afford to pay Rs 200-400 towards the cable fess monthly even if it is made available.While with the technology advances Private Companies(Dish TV) tries to introduce the concept of DTH-Direct to home which can be made available in everywhere in country it remain mostly in Urban areas due to lack of interest and unawareness about the rural market as potential revenue source.
With launch of India's First Free DTH Service -DD Direct Plus by Doordarshan on 16 December 2004 open up new dimension in this world of TV Viewing by Rural mass.This opens up the real future market of India for Brands.Response from rural and also poor and middle class urban was quite good with 6 million subscriber while Dish TV struggle for more than 15 yrs to reach 1 million.
Launch of DD Direct also opens the eyes of big corporate people about the really unexplored sector.Thanks to C.K.Prahalad for spreading the Buzzword"Bottom of Pyramid"and DD DTH which resulted in launch of 5 DTH services within span of about 3-4 years(Tata Sky, Sun Direct, Airtel digital TV and Big TV ,Videocon DTH throughout India).This really helped every Indian who watch TV in Terms of More Customer satisfaction and Better TV Viewing Experience.This also provided a platform for all products and services to reach a wider section of audience and also this resulted in flooding of new News and other Entertainment channels.
while initial expexctation about the DD DTH were very high among the Audience but Reality was something not Unexpected-Another Government Service (Indian).While initially DD was able to attract some big private channels-like Aaj TAk,Headline Today,BBC world , Zee Music.But soon almost all the channels get disappeared.Reason for this is high carriage fees partly shows inefficient management on govenrment side and other very seroius public thinking that government can't charge same fees as other private DTH Players are doing.This is despite the fact that Number of Subscriber is almost 6 times than most popular private operator.But soon the both parties realizes the mistakes thus resulting in reducation of carriage fess from 1 crore to 25 lakhs which resulted in flood of application from all types of channels including all the famous
music channels like Music India,9XM,B4U Music,Enter10,ETC and News and General Entertainment.While Music channels come first and able to secure slots but big News and GEC are unable to get their slot.Industry pressure of private DTH(all the private players are big name s sector on government may be one of reason for not allowing Heavy-weight players in Large audience reach as they want a pie of it.
I will write about "Whether DD DTH can be transformed into a profitable or no for profit venture like Freesat lauched by BBC and ITV in UK".
If you want to share any opinion then please put a comment here.Toghether we can Build a Better India.
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