MUMBAI: B4U Television Network India is converting its only pay channel B4U Movies to free to air (FTA) as it seeks to widen the reach of the channel in the rural belt. The Hindi movie channel will go FTA on 15 April.
Apart from B4U Movies, the company also owns and operates a Hindi music channel B4U Music, which is an FTA channel. Launched in 1999, B4U Movies is among the early entrants into the Hindi movie genre.
B4U Movies is priced Rs 3.55 on a la carte basis for addressable platforms and Rs 8.48 for non-addressable platforms. Despite being a pay channel, B4U Movies is also available on Doordarshan’s free direct-to-home (DTH) platform Freedish. B4U Music is also available on Freedish.
With FTA channels showing huge growth in viewership ever since BARC India started reporting data for rural TV households, it was only natural for B4U Movies to take the FTA route.
“We want to grow our reach in rural India, which is the big growth market now,” said a company official on condition of anonymity.
According to BARC India survey, the rural TV homes have surpassed urban TV homes. As per the Broadcast India 2016 survey, rural India boasts 99 million TV homes of the 183 million TV households while Urban TV household stands at 84 million. Earlier the urban/rural TV home split was 50:50, which has now become 46:54.
B4U Movies to go FTA to ride rural TV growth | TelevisionPost.com
