IRIS
India has the potential to become an uplinking hub for South East Asia, says
Amitabh Kumar, director (corporate), Zee TV, Earth Station and Uplinking. At
present, India has 140 channels which includes eight major satellite channels.
Eighty per cent of broadcasting is done offshore and 90 per cent of transponders
are on foreign satellites. As a result the revenue goes to overseas operators.
This is expected to change as the finance minister has announced a reduction
in basic custom duty rate on import of certain specified equipment for setting
up an earth station for broadcasting. Though the cost of setting uplinking
facilities in India is around Rs 7 lakhs/month compared to Rs 2.5 lakh/month
globally, it is believed that broadcasters can save more than Rs 60 lakhs per
channel as advertising revenue is expected to rise.
At present, most top broadcasters such as Zee, Star and Sony have their
uplinking facilities outside India and receive their revenue abroad. To prevent
foreign exchange outflow, government allows companies with export earnings to
advertise on such satellite channels. Now irrespective of export income, anyone
can advertise on channels as uplinking is done from India. Moreover, the
advertising rate here is expected to fall which may boost advertising revenue of
the channels.