Essel Group owned Direct to Home (DTH) operator Dish TV is moving towards a pure North focused offerings hiving off South India focused channels from its platform. Dish TV has dropped more than 50 channels in the span of less than week heavily cutting down on its South offerings.
Dish TV has in the last few days has dropped 51 channels from its platform including Kochu TV, Gemini Music, TV5 Music, V6 News, Udaya Music, Asianet Suvarna News, Adithya TV, Star Vijay Super, Star Sports 1 Tamil, Manoranma News, Mathrubhumi News, Gemini Comedy, Sakshi TV, T News, Kasturi TV, Colors Super, Colors Kannada Cinema, Colors Tamil, Kalaignar TV, Sun Music, Asianet Plus, Amrita TV, Kairali WE, Sun TV HD, Gemini TV HD, Bhojpuri Active (Service Channel), ETV Life, ETV Telangana, Kaumudy TV, SVBC, Star Suvarna Plus, Kairali News, Ishwar TV, BTV News Kannada, Dighvijay 24*7 News, Raj Musix Kannada, Subhavartha TV, Janam TV, Surya Music, Media One, ETV Andhra Pradesh, TV10 News, ABN Andhra Jyoti, News18 Kannada, Sirripoli, Jaya TV, Isai Aruvi, Surya Comedy, News18 Kerala, Shalom TV, and Chintu TV. The update came courtesy of our community forum member Deep S.
The removal of South channels on a large scale by Dish TV is an indicator that the operator is moving towards a complete North focused offering with D2H likely to act as its South focused offering. Dish TV in 2018 had allowed its customers to receive D2H channels in Dish TV set-top box itself by realigning their antenna to ST-2 direction. The realignment is free of cost and Dish TV customers can still request for alignment to ST-2.
The Competition Commission of India (CCI) in the case relating to the amalgamation of Videocon d2h Limited with and into Dish TV India Limited had stated that Dish TV and D2H would have to bear the cost of re-aligning and re-configuring the receiver antenna installed at customer’s premises or the cost of the antenna of the customer or set-top box which might need to be changed as a result of the combination between Dish TV and D2H, incase the DTH operators decided to surrender either of the transponders leased by Dish TV and D2H, so as to make it compatible with the transponders that may be retained by the resultant entity.
