NEW DELHI: Television cable industry is under distress as it lost 5.77 lakh jobs in the past six years.
A survey report by Ernst & Young and All-India Digital Cable Federation says the income of the cable distribution business is sinking.
In a first report on the crisis in the Cable TV industry, the survey claims cable TV is losing customers, profits going down and large scale of jobs gone.
In a survey of 28,100 local cable operators, the report said 93% agreed that their monthly income has gone down since 2018 while 79% disclosed drop of their income by 20%. As against 1.2 lakh employees in them in 2018, their number has gone down to 80,000 which means 31% fall.
This fall is attributed to two factors. First the new regulatory system of 2019 that snatched away freedom of the cable operators to beam channel package as per the local requirements of the viewers. Now it is the broadcasters who decide the package that the viewers may not like to see.
The second factor is affordability. The cable operators were providing more content at lesser price and they themselves earning less profit. Many even closed down their business.
The cable operators are cocerned over strict rules on price, contents and advertisements that are not followed by the DTH and OTT platforms.
The survey report says Pay TV services on subscription fee s are dropping. As against 15.2 subscribers in 2017, their number has gone down to 11.1 crore which means 4 crore houses have disconnected cable TV while the number of houses that do not watch TV or see only free contents. Their number is 14 cores.
The report also found that 10,000 out of 28,000 local cable operators have lost subscribers which is 40% of 2018. Earlier people were taking two, three cable connections but they now take just one connection and depend on broadband or smart TV.
The report suggests that TV contents should be exclusively for cable TV for some time to increase their value as done in case of films first shown in theatres and then on OTT.
