(2 April 2009 5:45 pm)

MUMBAI/NEW DELHI: Political advertising money has started moving to the DTH sector. Dish TV and Tata Sky have firmed up ad deals with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and are in talks with other political parties, including the Congress, as India goes to the Lok Sabha polls this month.

The BJP has committed Rs 1.5 million to Dish TV, which has a subscriber base of close to five million. Tata Sky, however, did not disclose the ad money it would get from the BJP.

“We have signed up with BJP for Rs 1.5 million and will be running their ads for a period of four weeks. We are also in talk with other parties,” Dish TV MD Jawahar Goel tells Indiantelevision.com.

Starting today, Dish TV will have ad spots running on its default landing interactive channel no. 999 and branding on its News Active and Bhakti Active services.

“We have developed this platform as a specialized media for advertisers. As the elections are coming, this is a good opportunity for national political parties like BJP and others to reach out to the 25 million viewers that Dish TV has,” says Goel.

Tata Sky has already started running BJP’s campaign on its channel no. 100, the promo channel of the DTH operator.

"We are in talks with several other political parties as well," says Tata Sky CMO Vikram Mehra.

Meanwhile, the new DTH entrants like Big TV and Airtel Digital TV have not been able to tap political advertising as their subscriber base is still too small, political sources say.

When contacted, Big TV CEO Sanjay Behl and Airtel Digital TV spokesperson said they have not signed any ad deals with political parties at this stage.

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