Zee, STAR top list of India media groups

The Times group gets an estimated 60% of its revenues from its very profitable print business

Zee, STAR and Times continue to dominate the list of top 10 media groups in India.

The march of TV distribution firms has been one of the biggest changes the listing has seen in five years. Tata Sky and Bharti Airtel are now firmly entrenched in the top 10.

This follows the global norm wherein some of the largest media firms are the ones with a hold on distribution. Comcast, the world’s biggest media company at $80.4 billion or Rs 514,560 crore in revenues, is a distribution monolith. 

The second change? Except for Times, HT Media and Jagran, there are no major print firms in the top 10. You could include DB Corporation, which at Rs 2,275 crore in the top line is at No 11. Of these, only Jagran, HT Media and DB are largely pure-print firms. The Times group gets an estimated 60 per cent of its revenues from its very profitable print business.

The rest is a mix between radio, the Internet, and TV. That makes one of India’s oldest media firms also one of its most diversified one. You could argue that Zee is also diversified with print, cable, DTH, radio and TV broadcasting. But a bulk of Zee’s revenues still comes from TV broadcasting and distribution.   

And a third fact that could go unnoticed is the complete lack of a film firm in the top 10 or 20. While film production is in good shape, the business suffers from a serious lack of screen infrastructure. So while TV distribution firms are thriving and have pushed up the broadcasting business, films are yet to find such joy.