Big Is Profitable

Sarma called on India to take a lead in regulating direct-to-home TV broadcasts by having a convention with the various governments in the Asia-Pacific on agreed guidelines along the lines of what European broadcasters are doing.

We have to thrash out all this before it is too late, he said.

Sarma also pointed out that the Indian cable & satellite business has failed to get out of its small-is-beautiful mindset. The cable business cannot grow as a small-scale industry; it has to expand and grow. Trained manpower has to be developed.

Sarma went on to add that the Measat DTH project with DD was being revived. He reckoned that DD's corporatisation is not far away. Six months at the most, he said.

 

Chandra, meanwhile, visualised an India with over 100 channels in the next five years. There will be mass entertainment channels and there will be the niche products, he said. His view is that Indian culture cannot be corrupted by the foreign influence as easily as the nation's intellectuals and politicians imagine. It has survived for centuries, he said. We welcome foreign programming. The regulation and means of distribution is the government's choice, he elucidated.

Chandra's opinion is that only one direct-to-home service will succeed in India. The second will be chasing breakeven; the rest will be bleed, he said. Yet we have the strange scenario where eight DTH services are planned for India.