Big TV may charge carriage fee from broadcasters

Reliance Big TV DTH, the wholly-owned subsidiary of Reliance Communications Limited, is looking at charging carriage fee from broadcasters, said company’s chief executive officer Arun Kapoor.

Carriage fee is paid by television broadcasters to multi-system operators and DTH players for airing their channels.

“As part of our revenue-driven strategy, we are planning to charge carriage fee from the broadcasters, which could be one of the major revenue streams for us going forward. We are currently negotiating with a few TV broadcasters for the same,” he told mediapersons here on Thursday, adding that the company was also in talks with leading television manufacturers in the country to bundle the latter’s products with its DTH services.

Kapoor said Big TV would be adding four more transponders to enhance its capacity by 50 per cent to 12 transponders on the MEASAT satellite system.

“With the addition of new transponders, the company will be able to beam 120 new channels to the existing 200-odd channels to take the total offering to around 350 by mid next year,” he said.

The company today launched a new feature – picture-in-picture – which will enables its viewers to watch 12 or more channels at the same time on any television set. It also launched an exclusive Telugu channel for its DTH customers, which will feature new and popular Telugu movies round the year.

Big TV will be available at 6,517 outlets, including 83 Reliance branded ones, across 491 towns in Andhra Pradesh, Kapoor said.