Bad news for employees of this industry as 577000 workers have lost jobs due to...
If you are part of the generation that grew up in the 1990s and 2000s, you will be familiar with the golden era of cable television, which was the only home entertainment outlet prevalent across every region of India. With the fast-paced growth of technology, that space has relinquished its space and faded slowly over the years. With the arrival of digital platforms and shifting viewer habits, the cable TV industry has continued to experience a steady decline, causing an unprecedented downturn over the last seven years.
According to the State of Cable TV Distribution in India report by the All India Digital Cable Federation (AIDCF) and EY India, nearly 5.77 lakh jobs in the sector have been lost between 2018 and 2025.
In 2018, an estimated 151 million households in India had Pay-TV connections. That number fell to 111 million by 2024, as defined in the report. Pay TV allows users to subscribe to many television channels (much like a cable bill) for a fixed amount of money. The report also projects that there will be 71 – 81 million Pay-TV subscribers by 2030. This shows that in comparison to 2018 the user base could be cut almost in half by 2030. A reduction of nearly 40 million subscribers can be attributed to a variety of reasons: the increase in price of TV channels, the popularity of OTT services like Netflix and Amazon Prime, and free alternatives like DD Free Dish. People are spending more time on streaming services and less time on traditional television channels.
This decrease has caused large economic losses to the cable TV industry. In 2019, the combined revenue of the four main DTH (Direct-to-Home) operators and ten major Multi-System Operators was ₹25,700 crore. In 2024, the revenue was ₹21,500 crore, or about a 16% decrease. In the same five years, the profit margin (EBITDA) for these DTH and MSOs also fell substantially by 29%, from ₹4,400 crore in 2019 to ₹3,100 crore in 2024.
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