Pay DTH base shrinks to 48.56 million, FM radio ad revenue falls 9%: TRAI

India's broadcasting sector had a subdued April-June 2026 quarter, even as telecom subscriptions kept growing. Data from the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) shows pay DTH operators lost subscribers and private FM radio operators saw advertising revenue fall by nearly a tenth from the previous quarter.

The figures are in the regulator's "Indian Telecom Services Performance Indicator Report" for the quarter ended June 30, 2026. The report is compiled mainly from information furnished by service providers.

Pay DTH loses ground

Four licensed pay DTH operators served 48.56 million active subscribers on June 30, 2026. That is down from 49.09 million at the end of March, a loss of about 0.53 million subscribers, or roughly 1.1% in a single quarter.

The figure does not include viewers of DD Free Dish, Prasar Bharati's free-to-air DTH platform. TRAI counts those separately, so the decline applies only to paid services.

A channel universe that is mostly free

The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting has permitted 915 private satellite TV channels for uplinking only, downlinking only, or both. Of these, 906 are available for downlinking in India.

According to broadcasters' reports to TRAI, 342 channels were declared pay channels as of June 30, and 37 pay broadcasters operate them. Of the pay channels, 238 are standard definition (SD) and 104 are high definition (HD).

The remaining 566 permitted channels are treated as free-to-air (FTA). That means about 62% of available channels carry no subscription, while pay channels make up about 38% of the total.

On the cable side, TRAI lists 736 registered multi-system operators (MSOs) and two HITS (Headend-in-the-Sky) operators. It also records 76 IPTV operators that have submitted self-declarations to the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting.

FM radio: revenue slides, footprint widens

Private FM radio saw the sharpest financial deterioration among the broadcast segments. Operators reported advertisement revenue of ₹376.16 crore for the quarter, against ₹414.03 crore in the previous quarter ended March 31, 2026. That is a fall of ₹37.87 crore, or about 9.1%.

The revenue figures cover slightly different channel counts. The June quarter figure is for 391 private FM channels, while the March quarter figure is for 390.

The network changed in other ways during the quarter:

• At the end of March 2026, there were 390 operational private FM channels across 120 cities, run by 31 operators.
• Permissions for five channels were surrendered with effect from June 14, 2026.
• HT Media Ltd began operating a new channel in a new city, Moradabad, from April 19, 2026.
• As of June 30, 2026, 386 private FM channels were operational across 121 cities, run by 30 operators.

So the sector has fewer channels and one fewer operator than a quarter earlier, but it covers one more city. These figures exclude All India Radio.

Community radio stood at 578 operational stations as of June 30.

Wider telecom backdrop

Broadcasting is shrinking at the margin while telecom keeps expanding. Total telephone subscribers rose to 1,348.08 million from 1,330.58 million in March, growth of 1.31% over the previous quarter and 10.65% over a year earlier. Overall tele-density reached 94.31%.

Internet subscribers rose 1.96% to 1,114.17 million, of which 1,087.50 million were broadband. Mobile data consumption grew 8.3% quarter-on-quarter to 84,424 petabytes, and average usage reached 28.39 GB per subscriber per month.

The telecom sector's gross revenue for the quarter was ₹1,06,797 crore, up 1.6% on the previous quarter and 10.5% on the previous year. Adjusted gross revenue was ₹88,796 crore.