India Broadband Forum

yoursraman

DTH industry goes niche in its expansion drive

Regional markets have been growing in importance and are increasingly being considered by all media – print, television, radio – for further expansion. For the direct-to-home (DTH) sector, regional has always been an attractive market. It is now taking a step forward and going niche – for instance, introducing western content for urban audiences and regional content for rural audiences.

DishTV had initially created a strong base in the regional markets and only later did it expand to the urban markets.

Salil Kapoor, COO, DishTV, elaborated, “DishTV addresses the needs of viewers living away from their native place and outside their language area by providing the depth and width of regional language content. This linguistic minority is able to view the programmes in their mother tongue and stay updated on the happenings in their native city or state. We look for a substantial chunk of revenues coming from regional markets in the coming time. Advertisers from sectors like FMCG, lifestyle, automobile, etc., have approached us and we are in consideration to partner with them for these markets.”

Sanjay Behl, Head - Brand and Marketing, Reliance Communications, said, “Regional markets have always been our primetime focus and we have different propositions for different regions. We also customise our advertising and value propositions according to that region.”

The industry boasts of offering its viewers more choice of channels and content and assured telecast quality. It is also one of the few broadcasting services that can penetrate in even the most remote areas of the country.

When it comes to revenue generations, the regional markets do represent a huge chunk of revenues for the sector, however, in some cases, it is equally distributed between metros and regional markets. But it is the larger towns or cities that help this industry to garner huge revenues.