Big TV Introduces Special Onam Offer for Kerala

Reliance BIG TV has introduced a special offer in Kerala for Onam festival. The new Smart South 2590 offer comes with a Get Starter Kit priced at Rs 1490 and recharge voucher worth Rs 1100, inclusive of all charges.

Subscribers in Kerala are in for a treat as the offer comes with total of 83 channels, including 15 Sun Network channels and more South regional language channels. So customers will get to watch at least 11 Malayalam channels.

Smart South 2590 offer also comes with 12-months free subscription of South Starter Lite Pack plus 8 channels, one free regional pack, an interactive service application and 10 audio channels.

This offer is available till September 9th. Customers will also be able to watch ESPN, Star Sports, Star Cricket, NDTV India, NDTV 24X7, NDTV Profit, and Animax, Discovery, Discovery Travel and Living and Nick.

Competition is rapidly increasing in the DTH market with new entrant Airtel Digital TV claiming to have surpassed the one million mark after launching its services nine months ago. Following the steps of Big TV, its rival Dish TV is planning to raise Rs 1,000 crore from foreign markets by the end of this quarter.

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Big TV Launches Offer for Ganesh Chaturthi

In a bid to expand its customer base Big TV owned by Reliance ADAG has launched a Ganesh Chaturthi festival offer for new customers.

The offer states that a new customer can get a Big TV DTH connection for Rs 1,590 and this includes all the installation and hardware charges.

To make it even more enticing the company has offered its starter pack two for two monts at no charge.

The starte pack two has 95 channels and is available at price of Rs 185 + taxes.

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DTH Market to See Growth, but Profits Uncertain

The DTH market is expected to grow 57% by December this year as opposed to the same period last year, according to the latest projections made by Media Partners Asia (MPA), the international media research agency.

The five DTH operators, Big TV, Airtel Digital, Dish TV, Tata Sky and Sun Direct are expected to add six million new subscribers by the end of December, to take the overall subscriber base to over 17 million. But the report also pointed out that the DTH operators will face rising economic challenges.

Although one-third of the subscribers of DTH service in Asia will come from India alone by end of the year, the five DTH operators will still have only around 30% market share by 2013, as compared to 70% for the cable operators. Vivek Couto, executive director, MPA, said, "The economics of the DTH industry are risky, as both subscriber acquisition costs and other key operating expenses, including content, will continue to outweigh revenues for another five years for most players."

While some DTH service providers are optimistic about their growth. Reliance BIG TV said it will cross the three million subscriber mark by the end of the current financial year. Mahesh Prasad, President, Reliance Communications, for BIG TV, explained, "Currently, Reliance BIG TV has a subscriber base of 1.8 million and is aiming at a 40% share of the incremental subscriber base in the Indian DTH Sector."

Read more » DTH Market to See Growth, but Profits Uncertain

Big TV Slated to Launch New Channels

In a bid to give their subscribers more variety and channels Big Tv is in talks with international music labels like Sony, BMG and Universal according to industry sources. Reliance ADAG is supposedly preparing to start broadcasting a lifestyle channel focused on fitness as well as an English music channel.

Recently the company sold telecast rights of 25 Hindi Movies to UTV Movies, hence a Hindi movie channel is not their foremost priority. Some sources claim that Reliance has had talks with Sahara One Media & Entertainment Ltd. to acquire, Filmy, its Hindi movie channel, but they could not agree on the cost.

It seems impossible for the company to launch a Hindi Channel with the lack of content in the market. According to sources, the companies only option is to acquire a movie channel or start syndicating content. Although the possibilities of running a big movie channel on syndicated content is rare.

Though the company has stated producing regional content through Big Productions and has applied to the Information and Broadcasting Ministry for 20 non-news channels, including regional and channels targeting children.

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Big TV Launches iStock to Track Market News

Reliance Big TV in partnership with Reliance Money has introduced another interactive feature, iStock, that provides information about Indian and international indices, currencies, commodity, stock and market news. This would be India's first portfolio tracking application through the DTH platform.

iStock will also provide subscribers with value-added services including a personal portfolio management tracker. The portfolio manager will also allow users to add, track upward/downward movement of their stocks automatically and the overall gain/ loss of their investments.

Mahesh Prasad, president, Reliance Communications, said, "We would like people to be able to trade from their living rooms. However, that will happen provided the regulatory body or the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) allows trading on the DTH platform. This will be followed by a chat facility and then allowing people to address customers. But that will take time."

In its bid to penetrate among the masses Big TV also recently launched various interactive features like iNews, iCooking and iAstro, iSports and iGames. The company is set to surpass two million subscriber base and intends to reach three million mark by end of the year.

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Big TV, Oxigen Tie-up for More Recharge Options

In a bid to enhance its customer service experience, Big TV has tied up with Oxigen, the single point recharge services in India, to offer its subscribers an option to recharge from Oxigen outlets across the country.

Subscribers can now make payments through credit cards, debit cards, internet banking, IVR, mobile mode payment (SMS) or by calling the toll free number 1800-200-9002.

Big TV customers availing these easy recharge options will get an electronic 12-digit pin number from the retailer, that has to be punched in either through SMS or by calling the toll free number and following the IVR instructions. This will credit the value of the recharge voucher into their Reliance Big TV account.

Mahesh Prasad, President, Reliance Communications, said, "We have partnered with Oxigen, a premium recharge service provider, to enable our customers to enjoy uninterrupted television viewing."

Big TV has adopted the strategy similar to the telecom sector, in fact many of the DTH players, of providing recharge vouchers at various retail outlets. Oxigen also provides recharge vouchers of Tata Sky, Dish TV, Airtel and Sun Direct. Big TV has over 100,000 outlets spread across 10,000 towns including local grocery stores, gift stores, and utility stores.

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Big TV in Talks with Carlyle & Providence for Funds

Further to Big TV's talks to sell stakes to private equity firms, Carlyle Group and Providence Equity have emerged as the front runners to clinch the deal.

According to reports, Deutsche Bank has been authorised to facilitate the deal and Big TV is looking to divest about 20% of which 10% will be sold now for around US$ 50-75 million. A senior official from Reliance said that Big TV needed between Rs 1500 to Rs 2000 crore for its expansion purpose.

While Government norms allow 49% foreign investment in DTH, it restricts FDI in a DTH operator at 20%, so Big TV is most likely to dilute its equity in stages.

Big TV is on an expansion spree. The company is also in talks with general entertainment channels such as Colors, Star Plus, Sony and Zee TV to acquire broadcast rights for some of their popular television shows.

Also in the offing is an aggressive ad campaign across TV, print, online and radio stations. Currently, Big TV has around 1.8 million subscribers, and is the third biggest player in the DTH market, after Dish TV and Tata Sky.

Read more » Big TV in Talks with Carlyle & Providence for Funds