India\u2019s paid direct-to-home (DTH) television industry lost 7.51 million subscribers in a year, while private FM radio advertising revenue fell 9.1% sequentially in the April-June quarter, highlighting continued pressure on two segments of the traditional broadcasting industry. <\/p>\n
According to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India\u2019s (TRAI) performance indicator report for the quarter, the active subscriber base of the four paid DTH operators declined 13.4% to 48.56 million as of June 30, 2026, from 56.07 million a year earlier. The decline continued in the latest quarter, with the subscriber base shrinking from 49.05 million in March. <\/p>\n
Tata Play remained the largest operator, with 14.84 million subscribers and a 30.56% market share, followed by Bharti Telemedia with 13.58 million subscribers (27.97%), Sun Direct with 10.93 million and Dish TV India with 9.21 million. The figures exclude subscribers to DD Free Dish, Prasar Bharati\u2019s free DTH service.<\/p>\n
Across television distribution platforms, selected operators reported a combined active subscriber base of 96.73 million as of June 30. This includes subscribers who had been inactive or temporarily suspended for up to 90 days. DTH accounted for 48.56 million subscribers, followed by cable, represented by multi-system operators (MSOs), with 37.24 million. Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) had 6.21 million subscribers, while Headend-in-the-Sky (HITS) operators reported 4.72 million.
\nBharti Airtel led the IPTV segment with 4.09 million subscribers, followed by Hathway Digital with 1.28 million. In the HITS segment, GTPL Hathway had 3.10 million subscribers, ahead of NXTDIGITAL with 1.61 million. <\/p>\n
The figures are based on data submitted by selected operators, rather than the entire universe of registered players. Of the 736 registered MSOs, 127 reported subscriber numbers to TRAI. Twelve of the 76 IPTV operators that had submitted self-declarations to the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting reported subscribers. Both HITS operators submitted data. <\/p>\n
India had 915 permitted private satellite television channels as of June 30, of which 906 were available for downlinking in the country. Of these, 342 were pay channels and 564 were free-to-air (FTA) channels, according to the accompanying TRAI chart. <\/p>\n
The number of pay channels was unchanged from March but higher than the 333 reported a year earlier. The 342 pay channels comprised 238 standard-definition and 104 high-definition channels. <\/p>\n
General entertainment accounted for the largest number of pay channels, at 108, followed by movies with 63 and news and current affairs with 61. Sports accounted for 41 channels, while kids\u2019 programming and infotainment had 24 and 23, respectively. <\/p>\n
Private FM radio broadcasters reported advertising revenue of Rs 376.16 crore in the April-June quarter, down from Rs 414.03 crore in the preceding quarter. The 9.1% sequential decline followed a fall from Rs 419.29 crore in the October-December 2025 quarter. Revenue was also lower than the Rs 383.14 crore reported in the April-June 2025 quarter. <\/p>\n
The number of operational private FM channels fell to 386 in June from 390 in March, even as the number of cities with operational private FM radio rose to 121 from 120. TRAI attributed the decline in channel numbers to the surrender of permissions for five channels. The number of private FM operators fell to 30 from 31. <\/p>\n
Community radio continued to expand, with the number of operational stations rising to 578 in June from 540 a year earlier and 566 in March. The year-on-year increase of 38 stations amounted to about 7%.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
India\u2019s paid direct-to-home (DTH) television industry lost 7.51 million subscribers in a year, while private FM radio advertising revenue fell 9.1% sequentially in the April-June quarter, highlighting continued pressure on two segments of the traditional broadcasting industry. According to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India\u2019s (TRAI) performance indicator report for the quarter, the active subscriber base of the four paid DTH operators declined 13.4% to 48.56 million as of June 30, 2026, from 56.07 million a year earlier. The decline continued in the latest quarter, with the subscriber base shrinking from 49.05 million in March. Tata Play remained the largest […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1042918","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-broadcasting"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1042918","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1042918"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1042918\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1042931,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1042918\/revisions\/1042931"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1042918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1042918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1042918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}