Laying fibre to home is a cumbersome and a slow process as every building has to be physically wired.
In terms of market capitalisation, Zee alone has a market cap of Rs 24,000 crore compared to Rs 15,000 crore of the merged Reliance entity.
Some of the firms that have witnessed major drop in analysts' coverage include Dish TV, YES Bank, and JSW Energy.
The company has kicked off sale of infrastructure assets as well as sale of a part of the promoter holding in Zee to repay loans.
'People want to know the life led by those living in Pakistan.'
Dish TV, a direct-to-home transmission service, is recruiting Call Centre Executives.
Shahrukh Khan is one of India's most loved "human brands", and while the drug controversy may have paused his endorsement engagements, it has not dented the superstar's popularity among corporate, as per industry experts. Right after the controversy around his son's arrest in an alleged drug case broke out, many companies halted ads featuring King Khan. Many of them are now back on screens.
Watching movies on direct-to-home has become cheaper, with two major DTH operators, Airtel DTH and Big TV, slashing pay-per-view (PPV) prices of premiere (new) movies. While Airtel DTH has reduced prices of paid movie services by 33 per cent, Big TV has cut prices by around 50 per cent.
The price-war has begun in the direct-to-home market with the country's largest DTH company Dish TV with over three million subscribers getting ready to offer its connection virtually free. Any consumer who wants to buy a Dish TV connection will not have to pay for the set-top box, the hardware essential to access DTH services, which normally costs Rs 2,500.
With the addition of 2 lakh subscribers every month, private direct-to-home (DTH) service operators Dish TV and Tata Sky may cross Rs 650 crore (Rs 6.5 billion) in revenues for financial year 2007-08, a three-fold increase from 2006-07. The revenues of private DTH operators may cross the Rs 1,000-crore (Rs 10 billion) mark in 2008-09 with a total subscriber-base of 8 million. Private DTH operators have to pay 10% of their revenues as the licence fees to operate the services.
US-based Apollo Global has picked up stake in Indian firms which are not doing that well financially.
The non-availability of transponders on satellites has hit the expansion plans of not only existing direct-to-home players such as DD Direct Plus and Dish TV but also new entrants such as Sun Direct, Reliance Bluemagic and the Bharti group.
The Direct-to-Home service providers are cashing in on the confusion over the implementation the Conditional Access System in some areas of Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata.
Dish TV, the DTH arm of Zee group which will list on the stock markets in October-November this year, expects to break-even by fiscal 2008-09.
One in five stocks from the BSE-500 index has underperformed the market and recorded losses.
'We should become an all-encompassing entertainment and information destination," says chairman Subhash Chandra, who monitors the group on a monthly basis, leaving the day-to-day operations to the chief executive officers.
The chairman of the Essel Group says he has settled 91.2 per cent of the estimated Rs 11,000 crore debt on the group's books.
Puneet Goenka's ability to stay calm is probably what helped Zee rise from a down-in-the-dumps broadcaster into one of the largest, steadiest and most profitable media companies in India, reports Vanita Kohli-Khandekar.
Zee is estimated to have paid around Rs 225 crore for the complete rights of Radhe. The total revenue that it may earn could be around Rs 135 crore, implying a shortfall of Rs 90 crore.
Lower bank rates the main draw; $6 bn to be raised in next few months.
With over 40 million active subscribers (as of March 2013), DTH has grown tenfold from just 4 million customers six years ago.
At a time when key economic indicators are pointing to a slowdown, market leaders in three sectors have been raising prices to maintain margins.
According to a report, Shah Rukh Khan endorses the maximum number of brands on TV, followed by Katrina and Kareena.
Services would be introduced on eight Delhi-bound Shatabdi trains and then in Rajdhanis and Durontos.
Debt funds have exposure of nearly Rs 8,000 crore to Zee group papers. Aditya Birla MF, HDFC MF, Franklin Templeton MF, and ICICI Prudential MF have the highest exposure, reports Samie Modak.
What worked for the markets was favourable global investor sentiment and encouraging flows into the emerging markets following stimulus measures taken by central banks.
In response to the consultation paper issued by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India on Friday, direct-to-home operators said the proposed interoperability of set-top boxes faced serious limitations.
With the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) directive for operators offering digital television services to allow consumers to select and pay subscription for channels they choose to watch, instead of offering only bundled packages, direct-to-home (DTH) service companies have begun rolling out the services.
Does the use of MPEG-4 automatically imply a better quality of audio and video than MPEG-2? Or is this just a marketing gimmick aimed at getting mileage out of a newer technology that isn't necessarily better?
A poll update from a village in Maharashtra.
Airtel Digital TV, the DTH arm of Bharti Airtel, is launching its High Definition service, with set top boxes (STBs) priced at Rs 2,840, further fuelling the price war in the sector.
There are presently around 20 million DTH subscribers in the country and Sun has managed to capture more than 25 per cent of the pie with a customer base of 5.3 million.
Broadcast tribunal TDSAT on Wednesday dismissed petitions of two Zee group firms Dish TV and WWIL seeking signals to operationalise HITS platform, while coming down heavily on the government for not bringing proper guidelines for its implementation.
The competition in the DTH space is set to increase further with players now looking at residential societies and apartments to add subscribers in volumes by offering Multi Dwelling Units (MDUs) that will benefit both parties.
Amitabh Bachchan, Shweta Tiwari and Sachin Tendulkar, who were at the first, third and fifth place in 2006, respectively, were not among the top five in 2008.
At a time the industry is slashing headcount, citing the downturn, direct-to-home (DTH) television service providers are adding employees.
As competition hots up in the direct-to-home (DTH) space, operators, including Dish TV and Sun Direct, are now turning to foreign language channels to build their content bouquet in a bid to take themselves ahead of other players.
The five private DTH operators (Dish TV, Tata Sky and Sun Direct being the other three) are expected to add over six million new subscribers by the end of December, to take the overall subscriber base to over 17 million, a 57 per cent growth over December 2008.
Meet Sapan Saran, the other heroine in Kanden Kadhalai.
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