Essel Group owned Direct to Home (DTH) operator Dish TV and D2H will be bumping up its customers who are currently subscribed to Sony Pictures Network India’s (SPNI) Happy India 30.5 onto Sony’s Happy India 38.5 bouquet. The move is due to the withdrawal of Sony’s Happy India 30.5 bouquets effective 1st August, 2020 which will necessitate distribution platform operators to make changes on their platforms.
Dish TV and D2H have set up notice on its website since Friday which respective DTH brand customers will see upon landing on the page. Both of them will move those customers who are subscribed to Happy India 30.5 to Happy India 38.5 which offers Sony TEN 3 and Sony BBC Earth as additional channels from 1st August, 2020. The respective DTH customers will however be free to pick their preferred Sony bouquet’s or select Sony channels on a-la-carte basis from the respective DTH website or app.
Dish TV on its website stated, “Sony Entertainment Television is discontinuing it’s Happy India Bouquet (Rs. 30.5 per month) from 1st August 2020. Subscribers of this bouquet will be provided a new Sony bouquet with 2 additional channels (Sony BBC Earth and Ten Sports 3) @Rs. 38.5 per month. The composition of Sony Happy India Bouquet is available on Dish TV website. All channels of Sony Happy India bouquet are also available on a-la-carte basis. You may choose the Sony Channels / Bouquets of your choice from Dish TV app / website.”
D2H on its website stated, “Sony is discontinuing the Happy India Bouquets 31 @ MRP Rs. 30.50. Accordingly, from August 01, 2020, Subscribers having this bouquet will be provided Sony Happy India Bouquet 39 @ MRP Rs. 38.50. Sony Happy India Bouquet comes with two additional channels, Sony BBC and Ten 3 which will be made available to the subscribers. All channels of Sony Happy India bouquet 39 are also available on an a-la-carte basis. You may pick your preferred Sony Channels/Bouquets from website or in the d2h Infinity app.”
Siti Network was the first DPO to intimate its LCO partners and customers about the discontinuation of bouquets from SPNI end. Multiple MSOs including Fastway, Home Cable, DEN Networks, and Hathway among others have also started running scrolls and notices on Electronic Program Guide (EPG) to inform their customers about the discontinuation of Sony’s Happy India 30.5 bouquets.
At the time of filing this story, Airtel Digital, Sun Direct, and Tata Sky are yet to inform their subscribers about the discontinuation of these bouquets effective 1st August, 2020. DreamDTH had earlier on 17th July broken the discontinuation of Happy India 30.5 bouquets from Sony’s end effective 1st August, 2020.
The silence from the respective DTH operators is interesting given the oblique references TRAI made in its direction on Friday to broadcasters which stated that the major broadcaster which was discontinuing low priced bouquets from 1st August had not reported the changes to TRAI violating reporting rules.
The non-implementation of NTO 2.0 from broadcasters and meddling with bouquet offerings to increase its monthly pay-out has irked TRAI off. It would further seem that certain DPOs tipped off the regulator about the broadcaster’s move to discontinue low priced bouquets without any intimation to TRAI which has seemingly set off a nerve at the broadcasting watchdog’s end.
