A powerful industry body of MSOs has criticised India’s public broadcaster Prasar Bharati for inviting private sector satellite TV channels to onboard its proposed OTT platform, saying that it would be violative of the government’s own uplinking and downlinking guidelines.

“Prasar Bharti vide its letter dated 5th Aug 2024, have issued a NIA (Notice Inviting Application) to all the linear satellite TV channels for on-boarding on their OTT platform. The above NIA by Prasar Bharti is promoting broadcasters to violate clause 11(3) (f) of the Uplinking & Downlinking guidelines dated 9th November 2022 and its subsequent amendment dated 24th March 2023,” the AIDCF said in a letter to the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting.

Broadcasters are required to adhere to the downlinking guidelines, for the grant of permission to downlink satellite TV channels, irrespective of the distribution platforms, said All India Digital cable Federation (AIDCF) in its letter. The organisation boasts of member-companies including DEN Network, Hathway, Hinduja Global Solutions’ IMCL and Siti Networks.

The AIDCF also accused the broadcasters of misinterpreting existing regulations by stating that national broadcaster Prasar Bharti was outside the purview of regulator TRAI regulations and the federal law, Cable TV Act.

AIDCF alleged that as per law satellite TV channels cannot be part of Prasar Bharti’s proposed OTT platform and can only provide their channels’ signals to  registered DPOs.

Apart from pointing out the loopholes regarding TV channels vis-à-vis OTT platforms, the AIDCF letter highlighted that many streaming applications were mushrooming due to absence of any regulation or guidelines and will, thus, escape any regulatory vigilance as they were neither registered with MIB nor are reporting their server details/subscriber details to the government.

“Cable TV and DTH industry had already witnessed a huge churn in their subscriber base in last six years, wherein…the combined subscriber base of cable TV and DTH industry has significantly reduced to 120 million in 2024, which is an erosion of 33 percent of total subscriber base,” the AIDCF letter said, adding that such reduction in subscribers has financially impacted the distribution sector.

“We seriously apprehend that if the regulatory disparity and violation continues, (distribution) industry will witness not only capital loss leading towards winding up of many DPOs and reduction in the size of industry, but also huge loss of employment due to such shrinkage,” the letter added.

Pointing out that if private broadcasters were allowed to join Prasar Bharti’s proposed OTT platform it would “kill the distribution platform operators completely”, the AIDCF exhorted MIB to direct the pubcaster to “withdraw” the office memo on onboarding satellite TV channels.

Prasar Bharati, which has announced its decision to start an OTT platform to provide wholesome family content to viewers, put out a notice in August seeking participation from private sector TV broadcasters and, amongst other sops, offered a 65:35 revenue share in favour of private broadcasters.

The revenue share will be calculated after adjusting Prasar Bharati‘s expenses for the channel, including transcoding, CDN costs, and agency commissions, a report in the Economic Times had stated.

According to the report, which quoted a notification from Prasar Bharati that’s on its website, only those TV channels permitted by the Indian government will be eligible to join the proposed streaming platform.