Following on the lines of broadcasters like Zee, Times Network and TV18, now the popular broadcaster Sony Pictures India has also revamped its pricing of channel packages in response to the market conditions. With this new development, Star India will be the only broadcaster left which has not tweaked its channel packs pricing. The broadcaster currently only offers two packs – value and premium. The initial bouquet and channel pricing strategy which Star had charted out initially remains unchanged till now. The broadcaster also hasn’t broken up its English and sports channels. However, looking at the market conditions it is likely that Star India might have to tweak its channel pricing since Sun Direct and D2h, two DTH providers have already boycotted Star India’s packs to force the broadcaster to offer smaller packs.
Sony Introduces New Regional, Sports and English Packs
As per the new change reported by Ultra News which Sony has done to its portfolio, now Happy India Plans come with more variety of channels compared to the original pack. Previously, the Happy India packs were divided into four types Platinum, Premium/Gold, Silver and Sixer. Prior, the main struggle was for the non-Hindi speakers who were forced to get the Hindi channel pack to watch the Sports or English channels from Sony. The three English channels by Sony are AXN, PIX, Sony Earth. As per the latest information, Sony has also decided to drop its English channel, Le Plex HD thus reducing its English portfolio to three.
English Packs by Sony Starting at Rs 12
The English pack by Sony comes at the price of Rs 12 for the SD version of the three channels, and the price is Rs 20 for the HD version. Compared to the previous price of Rs 90, this pack is definitely much more affordable for the subscribers. Sony has also added two dedicated Sports pack to its portfolio, one which comes with Ten 3 and the other without it. Sony also has a new pack which includes all of its English and Sports channels except Ten 3 which is available for Rs 47 in SD and Rs 50 in HD. There are also three Happy India packs focused on the South Indian market starting at Rs 19. Additionally, Sony also has Marathi and Bangla versions of these packs which come with the regional channels.
It is worth noting after looking at the market conditions; the broadcasters are beginning to break up their channel packs to allow more flexible choices for the consumers. Since now the consumers will be able to decide on their own which channels they want to subscribe to, it will be harder for the broadcasters to charge more for the packs and force the subscribers to buy unnecessary channels.
