Following Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI)’s mandate last year, leading pay channel group Discovery has parted ways with Multi Screen Media (MSM) in India.
The almost 12-year-old distribution JV between two parties ends in the television distribution space with effect from January 1, 2015.
As per the report, TRAI mandated that distributors cannot bundle channels from different broadcasters while selling content to various platforms such as cable operators and direct-to-home (DTH) entities.
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“The existing distribution platforms can only act as agents of individual broadcasters and need to sell each network bouquet separately,” TRAI had mentioned in its order. According to a report, “The two also decided to part ways over differences in the way the subscription revenues in the company are to be shared between the two partners.”
12 years ago, when One Alliance was started by the JV, MSM was the big player while Discovery was a smaller niche channel. As a result, while MSM controlled 74 per cent of the equity in the JV, while the rest was with Discovery.
