BBC Worldwide to close unprofitable BBC Entertainment in India

Nov. 4, 2012 - PRLog -- BBC Worldwide is finding challenging and unprofitable to operate in India and has decided to close down two of its channels in India, BBC Entertainment and CBeebies.

Commenting on the decision, Mark Whitehead, Senior Vice President and General Manager, BBC Worldwide Channels Asia stated, “India is a dynamic and fast growing media market but remains uniquely challenging for pay TV channels.  
Specifically, delays in digitisation and the need for channel operators to pay cable platforms for carriage make the economics of running channels very challenging at this time.”

Most of the Indian cities have had analogue cable television in the past. According to the latest report digitisation has been almost complete in Mumbai and 95 per cent in Delhi. Even Kolkata, 83 per cent of homes are digitised. The rest of the country has to move to digital TV in three phases by December 31, 2014.

A digital system provide a clear picture of the number of TV homes, and the broadcasters will be able to get correct revenues instead of under declared revenue as of now by many cable operators in India.

Most of the western companies just don't realise that Indian market is just different and more complicated than that in the west and it is not easy make profits in India specially for a western companies unless they understood how the business is done in India.

It appears that just like other western companies, BBC is also learning the lesson now on how to do business in India.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTm7Or_1a7M