India’s paid C&S subscribers is 139 mn in 2014: FICCI KPMG

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MUMBAI: The number of TV households in India increased to 168 million in 2014, implying a TV penetration of 61 per cent, according to FICCI-KPMG’s new report on the Indian media and entertainment sector.

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The number of cable and satellite (C&S) subscribers increased by 10 million in 2014 to reach 149 million. Excluding DD Direct, the number of paid C&S subscribers is estimated to be 139 million, implying an 82 per cent penetration rate.

The paid C&S subscriber base is expected to grow to 175 million by 2019, representing 90 per cent of TV households. Buoyed by monetisation due to digitisation, subscription is going to overtake advertisement revenue growth.


According to the report, subscription revenue growth at an annualised growth rate of 16 per cent is expected to outpace the annualised advertising revenue growth of 14 per cent.

Overall, the television industry in India is estimated at Rs 475 billion in 2014, and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 15.5 per cent to reach Rs 975 billion in 2019.

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Distribution With 168 million TV households, India is the world’s second-largest television market after China but remains highly unstructured.

Though digitisation of C&S households crossed the 50 per cent mark in 2013, implementation challenges persist in achieving improvement in addressability and increase in monetisation.

As a result, there was no real impact from digitisation on the sharing of subscription revenues among the different participants or carriage fees in 2014.

While the rollout of digital set-top boxes (STBs) slowed down in 2014, multi-system operators (MSOs) have focused on improving their business model in Phase I and II cities. Digitisation has changed the role of MSOs from being a B2B service provider to a B2C service provider and it is taking time for MSOs to build internal processes to reflect this change in business model.

This, coupled with continuing resistance from LCOs, has resulted in delays in implementation of gross billing and rollout of channel packages in Phase I and II cities.

According to industry participants, higher collection per subscriber for the MSOs and hence broadcasters is possible only after the end-customers start paying for what they watch, instead of paying for the base pack and receiving all channels. On the other hand, direct-to-home (DTH) operators have continued to focus on improving realisations by increasing penetration of HD channels, premium channels, and value-added services.

The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (MIB) extended the deadlines for Phases III and IV of Digital Addressable System (DAS) implementation to 31 December 2015 and 31 December 2016, respectively.

DAS rollout in Phases III and IV is expected to be more challenging on account of the larger geographical spread, funding requirements, and low potential for average revenue per user (ARPU).

DTH is expected to take the larger share of analogue subscribers in Phases III and IV than they did in Phases I and II.

The KPMG report expects a delay of 12 months in the rollout of STBs in Phases III and IV each. It expects the rollout in Phase IV to be largely complete by December 2017.

The benefits of digitisation in these phases in terms of improved addressability and ARPU are expected to take much longer.

At the end of 2019, digital cable and DTH subscribers are expected to be in the ratio of 55:45, with 94 million digital cable subscribers and 76 million DTH subscribers by 2019.

However, global digital TV conversion is expected to be almost complete by 2020. Based on forecasts for 138 countries, global digital TV penetration is likely to reach 98 per cent of television households in 2020, up from 40 per cent in 2010 and 68 per cent in 2014. By 2020, 94 countries are expected to be completely digital compared with only 12 in 2013. About 124 countries are expected to have more than 90 per cent digital penetration by 2020.

Digital cable is expected to become the most popular TV platform in 2014, accounting for 34 per cent of the world’s TV households in 2020.

Other dominant digital technologies will be digital terrestrial transmission (DTT) and DTH, followed by IPTV.

Cable is a dominant technology largely in China, India and the USA. In 2013, cable in India accounted for 58 per cent of all TV households, followed by China and the USA at 56 per cent and 51 per cent respectively.

Outside of these countries, cable accounted for only 21 per cent of TV households in 2013. As a result, TV digitisation efforts of most governments have been on ATT to DTT switchover rather than on digitisation of cable.

The rollout of digital cable STBs in Phase I and II cities was largely complete by December 2013. 2014 was expected to be the year when gross billing and rollout of channel packages would progress, resulting in more equitable sharing of revenues among the different players in the television value chain.

However, this has continued to evade the industry due to several challenges on the ground. While resistance from local cable operators (LCOs) in giving up ownership of customers continues, the MSOs have tried to tackle this challenge by taking a joint go-to-market approach instead of attempting to remove LCOs from the value chain.

Though channel packages have been rolled out in some cities, collection for the MSO from the LCO continues to take place based on a fixed amount per subscriber and not on the basis of the channel package chosen. On a positive note, the larger MSOs appear to have reached an understanding to stop poaching LCOs from each other in Phase I and II areas and focus instead on improving realisations.

Read more at:

http://www.televisionpost.com/ficci-frames/indias-paid-cs-subscribers-is-139-mn-in-2014-ficci-kpmg-report/
 
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