Labyrinths behind the screen: Ownership and control in TV cable distribution

ABSTRACT

The anxieties of consolidation and concentration have been central to the study of the media business across the world. Debates on media ownership have either pointed at business models and regulatory conditions leading to market concentration or the increasing accumulation of interests by political actors in the media business. This paper delves into the simultaneity of such dynamics in India, as refracted in the business of TV distribution. Once merely a downstream segment of the visible and highly researched broadcasting segment, cable distribution has emerged as the prime commercial locus, technological driver, and regulatory site in India’s TV business. Our paper unearths the modes of expansion of leading cable distribution companies across various regions of India. We find the expansion of cable companies rested on a dual engagement with regional ecologies of distribution: first, pursuing commercial growth by capturing, rather than developing, pre-existing regional markets, and second, flexibly engaging with, rather than uniformly steamrolling, incumbent regional actors. To manage these interests, a complex network of subsidiaries, interlocking directorships, and web of employees were created. Such a business-model not only propelled the expansion of what have today become gigantic, cross-regional cable companies but also spawned their peculiar ownership structure.

KEYWORDS:

• Cable television
• media distribution
• media infrastructure
• media ownership
• oligopoly
• India

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This article emerged from the research initiative, ‘Tracking Access under Digitalization’, at the Centre for Culture, Media & Governance, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, supported by the Ford Foundation. The authors thank Anushi Agrawal, Devi Leena Bose, Jai Karan Singh, and Manjusha Madhu for research assistance, and Pradosh Nath, Biswajit Das, and Douglas Hill for discussions at various times.

Notes on contributors

Vibodh Parthasarathi

Vibodh Parthasarathi has a multidisciplinary interest in media policy/business/history. Associate Professor, Centre for Culture, Media and Governance at Jamia Millia Islamia, has been a visiting scholar at the University of Queensland, KU Leuven, University of Helsinki, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, and a Non-Resident Fellow at Centre for Media, Data and Society, Central European University. Parthasarathi has been at the forefront of media policy research in India and has won numerous research grants including from the Ford Foundation, Canada’s IDRC, SSRC, and the India’s University Grants Commission. Within and beyond his many international collaborations, he remains attracted by questions about media regulation in the longue durée, experiences of digital transitions and media policy/business as a knowledge enterprise. Platform Capitalism in India (Palgrave 2020) is his latest edited work, following the double-volume The Indian Media Economy (OUP 2018) and the triptych Communication Processes (Sage 2007, 2009, 2010).

Alam Srinivas

Alam Srinivas is an independent investigative journalist, author, and researcher. With 35 years of experience he has worked for renowned global and Indian media organizations such as www.bbc.com, Times of India, India Today, and Outlook. He has given lectures in Business Schools and appeared as panelist in TV and radio shows. Apart from books on the Ambani family and the Indian middle class, he most recently authored Reforms: How liberalization impacts us; How Bollywood portrays them (2021).