Suryansh Broadcasting owned 24 hours pay Malayalam channel Flowers TV earlier this year notified it’s NTO 2.0 Reference Interconnect Offer invoking TRAI’s 1st January 2020 amendments. This is the sixth publicly available RIO published by various broadcasters since 15th January 2020 when Mavis Satcom became the first broadcaster to comply with TRAI’s initial deadline.
The Reference Interconnect Offer came into effect from 01st October 2020, a day later after the existing agreements with distribution platform’s were to finish. For the unaware, when NTO was implemented in 2019 Flowers TV was a Free-to-Air (FTA) channel which was later converted into a pay channel on 1st October 2019 with a-la-carte price of Rs 10 per month excluding taxes.
The initial agreement was supposed to run from 1st October 2019 to 30th September 2020. Flowers TV notified the revised RIO effective 1st October 2020 becoming the sixth broadcaster to publicly publish their Reference Interconnect Offer.
The pricing remains unchanged with Flowers TV being an individual channel remaining unaffected by the twin bouquet formation rules.
Mavis Satcom, Odisha TV, CSL Infomedia, Lex Sportel Vision, IN10 Media and Suryansh Broadcasting are the six broadcasters who have till date publicly published their own NTO 2.0 RIOs. All eyes remain glued on the Bombay High Court which has to pronounce it’s judgment after having reserved the verdict.
