Broadcasters threaten to disconnect their services on large cable platforms

Mumbai : The cable operators have refused to sign the agreement put out by the four largest Broadcasters who are now threatening to pull out by midnight. The main DTH players have signed this agreement in support of the broadcasters.

Some of the largest cable operators in India, including GTPL, Hathway, DEN, NXT Digital, Fastway, KCCL, Asianet and UCN among others, have not signed the agreement as a mark of protest against this unreasonable pricing by the broadcasters. Also, the LCO associations are in court fighting this unfair pricing and one of the cases comes up for hearing on the 21 February.

The Bengal LCO association has gone to Calcutta High Court and asked for a stay on the disconnection. The Judge there has verbally told the counsels for the broadcasters to not action the disconnection as the case is posted for Tuesday. While this has been told verbally by the Court, it has not been recorded.

The broadcasters are threatening disconnection even when there are multiple cases pending in various courts. This price rise has been implemented by the broadcasters themselves. They seem to be in a hurry to implement the revised prices which they have announced as per the Tariff Order issued by TRAI in November 2022. MSOs as well as LCOs have complained to TRAI in this regard on multiple occasions.

When the broadcasters went to court against NTO 1, the case dragged on for nearly two years and there was no action by TRAI. It was the same scenario in 2020 when the broadcasters were in court for nearly two years. Today, when the cable operators have gone to court, TRAI is in a tearing hurry to implement the new rates and have even sent notices for compliance to them. Broadcasters have also put out no information to consumers regarding this price rise which they had done while implementing NTO 1. This time around, they are expecting LCOs and MSOs to go and confront the consumer and explain the price rise on their own.

A substantial price impact is expected on the consumers if this goes through which will be across platforms and not just limited to cable platforms. The second aspect is that if the broadcasters go through with this disconnection i.e. stop broadcasting of their channels, there are about 30-35 mn subscribers on which the signals will not be visible which will also impact the advertisers. The advertisers already have an inventory and they will not be able to reach out to these consumers, will they get their ROI?

Thirdly it is the consumer; today he is paying a much higher amount for a cable/DTH subscription than an OTT platform. The consumer is not aware that the channels are going to go off, as the broadcasters have given a two day notice. If the broadcaster switches off the consumer, they will come to the cable operator and question him as to why he is not getting a particular channel. This will create a huge unrest in the already frayed market.

Lastly, there are about 2,00,000 LCOs in the country today who will be impacted if there is any decline in subscriber base. In an already declining market, this action by broadcasters may hasten the decline and result in lacs of LCOs and their employees being rendered jobless and without enough income to sustain their families.