Tele's new vision: A shift from linear to digital amid changing audience

The growth of TV depends on its ability to migrate its audiences and business online

As television languishes on older distribution formats such as cable and DTH, it is having a concurrent resurrection online, providing half of all videos consumed and cornering 45% of all media revenues. Here is a look into its future.

Karan Johar’s celebrity chat show, Koffee with Karan, had six successful seasons on Star World. Yet, in July this year, Disney chose to shift the seventh season to its over-the-top (OTT) streaming platform, Disney+Hotstar. This triggered sniggers of, “Who watches TV anyway?”

Actually, 878 million Indians do. That is nearly twice the number watching online videos. In the last three years, online audiences have grown faster than any other medium including television. On the other hand, linear television, or what we know as TV channels with scheduled broadcasts, declined marginally last year. However, it is television that is fuelling the growth of online videos in India — on YouTube, short video apps, and all other distribution formats that power video consumption.

Koffee with Karan, Anupamaa, Kumkum Bhagya, films, cricket, football… TV content constitutes about half of all videos watched online. It has always been so. After three decades of dominance, broadcasters simply understand popular programming. It is television and film executives who call the shots at Google, Meta, Amazon, and other tech-media firms. Disney+Hotstar and SonyLIV, both owned by television companies, are among the top 10 video apps in India. Television — with Rs 72,000 crore a year in advertising and pay revenues —towers over every other outlet, cornering 45 per cent of all media revenues.

The future is here

What is shaping the future of television is not just the growth of OTT or the decline of cable and DTH, but also the rise of the internet as the latest distribution technology for television content. 

“TV is but a screen and the screen size will increase as connected TVs (internet-enabled smart TVs) take off. But it is both the top and bottom end of the market that are driving growth,” says Ashish Pherwani, partner and leader for the media and entertainment practice at EY. Agrees Shrikant Shenoy, associate vice-president, Lodestar Universal. “TV is on a strong wicket. OTT, other screens, cinema are seen as alternate viewing,” he says.

Hiren Gada, CEO of Shemaroo Entertainment, who calls his company a big believer in digital, says the television story still has a long runway. “The core TV consumer will stay,” he says. Shemaroo, putting its money where Gada’s mouth is, put the bulk of its Rs 150 crore investment during the last 2.5 years in linear television.

This is where the future bit comes in. The migration of viewers at the top end to ‘pay OTT’, or subscription-based streaming platforms, and at the bottom end to free-to-air television and ‘free OTT’ is the single-biggest trend right now. It means the decline of television on older distribution formats, such as cable and DTH, and its concurrent resurrection online.

Growth of free video

“YouTube and DD Freedish (Prasar Bharati’s free DTH service) are the big winners in this market for the coming years,” says Anuj Gandhi, formerly with Viacom18 and now a media consultant.

Over the last three years, DD Freedish has gone from 25 million to an estimated 50 million homes, translating into more than 200 million viewers. YouTube has risen from about 285 million unique visitors in 2019 to over 485 million earlier this year, Comscore data shows. The biggest loser has been cable, which is down from more than 100 million homes covering 420 million viewers in 2018 to an estimated 70 million homes covering 294 million viewers now. This is lower than the official figure of 83 million cable homes.

The future of broadcasting, then, is evident in two ways. One, the growth of an alternative free ecosystem that is not adequately captured by any of the existing metrics. Take Dangal TV, which offers reruns of older shows. It is among the Top 10 most watched general entertainment channels in the country across languages, ages, and geographies. Shemaroo TV, Azaad TV, and a host of the 167 channels on DD Freedish aren’t names that ring too loud a bell in the metros. Then there are the huge numbers that free OTTs such as MX Player, which has 156 million viewers, or half a dozen short video apps such as Josh or Instagram Reels get. This continues to expand television’s reach, albeit as a content source.  

Two, the rise of pay OTT. According to Media Partners Asia, by the end of March 2022, India had 97 million subscribers for pay OTTs. And these are coming largely from pay TV: read that as cable and DTH homes. That explains why Tata Sky, a DTH operator, changed its name to Tata Play earlier this year. It offers Binge Combo plans that include linear television channels and several OTT apps including Netflix.

The growth of TV, therefore, depends on its ability to migrate its audiences and business online, irrespective of the technology that transmits the content. The future hinges on the internet. And television seems to be riding that, for now.