Tata Play to Remove Sony Channels for 10 Million Subscribers

According to a report by Mint, Indian DTH TV service Tata Play is going to remove all channels of Sony Pictures Networks India from nearly 10 million subscribers’ plans.

The removal has started with one million subscribers from August 1, 2024, and will go on for the next 10 days, according to Harit Nagpal, managing director and chief executive officer.

The DTH operator had claimed it was dropping the channels because of low viewership; however, SPNI termed the move as “arbitrary” and “retaliatory”.

Nagpal said though 40-50% of Tata Play subscribers take Sony channels, only 25% actually view these channels as per viewership data.

He said, “Without return path data, it’s very difficult to tell who the 75% of subscribers are who pay for these channels but never watch them. We took a call as a customer-centric company, and decided to drop these channels and help bring down the monthly DTH bills of these subscribers. “Those who want to continue watching Sony channels can subscribe again via our app or call centre, or by sending a text message. The reactivation is almost instantaneous.”

He admitted that the loss of channels would hurt revenues, but he said that only those viewers wanting these extra channels should have to pay for them.

The SPNI spokesperson responded to Mint’s queries, “SPNI has just come to know about Tata Play’s decision to drop Sony channels from close to 10 million subscribers’ bouquets. This seems to have been done without notice to SPNI or subscriber preferences being considered. We believe this is in retaliation to the exercise of our audit rights on Tata Play’s subscriber management system wherein we have noted and written back on several discrepancies over the past years.”

Tata Play has decided to drop the subscription plans for almost half of its subscribers in March 2022. This move saved ₹30-100 per month for every subscriber and helped the company hold back more subscribers.

“We wanted to experiment with dropping the bouquet with least viewership given the flexibility we offer. In this case, it was Sony. Customer bills will get reduced accordingly,” said Nagpal.