What a regional broadcaster's strategy office is for

I judge an acquisition by what it adds to our depth within a language, not by the number of states it colours on a map. Since 2018 my team has screened 23 candidates and I have recommended two; one, Ghatmatha Entertainment, was completed in October 2022 for ₹465 crore. For every candidate we estimate its share of viewing time in its language over three years, its rank, the share of distribution packs that include its channels, the library hours it owns outright rather than licenses, and which writers and producers would leave with the founders. Integration is where I have learnt most. Distribution negotiations, advertising systems and rights management gain from scale; commissioning and talent rarely do. When we moved Ghatmatha's commissioning approvals to Chennai in 2023, two head writers left, and I reversed the change after nine months. I also work with our legal team on the requirements of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting when a permitted channel changes hands.

Content is our largest cost, about ₹1,060 crore in 2025–26, and the hardest to price. I value rights by the viewing hours they should earn over ten years across premiere, repeat telecasts and streams on Ilavenil Play, using our own ratings and streaming history, and I compare that value with the price asked. For new Tamil and Telugu films we now set a ceiling for every bid, and every film above ₹15 crore reaches our content committee with an hours case beside the price. For fiction commissioned for our channels, I track the cost of a thousand viewing hours by slot and language. For sport, I treat a rights fee as the cost of acquiring subscribers and attention, and compare it with other ways of buying the same thing, such as bundles with broadband operators. I do not judge creative quality; that belongs to our programming heads. My contribution is to make the price of their judgement visible.

TRAI regulates the tariffs and interconnection terms on which pay television channels reach viewers through direct-to-home, cable and other distribution platforms. Under the framework that took effect in early 2019, each pay channel carries a declared price, viewers choose channels individually or in bouquets, and a channel priced above a regulatory ceiling cannot be offered inside a bouquet. I led Ilavenil's preparation for that change: declaring prices for nine pay channels and six bouquets, and renegotiating agreements with 14 platforms. Distribution brought us ₹880 crore in 2025–26. My team reconciles the subscriber reports platforms send us and audits them where the regulations permit. The question I watch most closely is concentration. A proposed merger between two of our platforms would put more than a third of our distribution income in one counterparty's hands, and our negotiating position depends on whether each of our channels is one its customers would miss.

Regional television advertising follows the fortunes of consumer goods companies, consumer durables, jewellers and property developers, and it peaks around Pongal and Sankranti in January and the festive season from Ganesh Chaturthi to Deepavali. When budgets tighten, the temptation is to sell more minutes at lower rates. In 2024–25, when several large advertisers cut regional spending, our sales team proposed exactly that. I argued with our CFO for holding the effective rate per ten seconds of airtime in prime time, selling fewer minutes and offering annual sponsorship of our strongest fiction instead. Advertising revenue fell 6 per cent that year, but rates recovered faster in 2025–26 than they would have from a discounted base. Over five years I have argued for a mix less dependent on the cycle: advertising was 54 per cent of revenue in 2020–21 and 43 per cent in 2025–26, with distribution, streaming and licensing making up the difference.

My years at Varanya Towers taught me how shared infrastructure is priced. A tower company registered with the Department of Telecommunications as an infrastructure provider earns more as each additional operator places equipment on the same site, so the tenancy ratio, not the tower count, decides its returns. Mobile operators acquire spectrum in auctions run by the Department of Telecommunications, generally on reserve prices that TRAI recommends, and their spectrum and network plans shape what they will rent. At Ilavenil the same lesson applies to partners who are much larger than we are. About half of Ilavenil Play's 2.3 million paying subscriptions arrive through bundles with broadband and mobile operators, and our 2023 agreement with a global streaming service co-funds eighteen series. In each case I price the agreement on what we keep after it ends: the customer relationship, the rights that return and the data we are allowed to see.