Television in this country for sure is not dead: Uday Shankar

The formal announcement of the merger between Reliance Industries’ Viacom18 and Disney’s Star India saw media veteran Uday Shankar being placed as the Vice Chairperson of Jiostar, the newly formed $8.5bn entity. 

In an interview to Financial Times, soon after the announcement, Uday Shankar expressed his confidence in Television as a medium. Traditional television revenue could experience “significant double-digit growth within the next several years” on the back of fresh investment in innovative content ranging from dramas to soaps, Shankar told the publication.

Uday Shankar, Vice Chairperson of Jio Star — the freshly formed company whose merger was completed on Thursday — said traditional television revenue could experience “significant double-digit growth within the next several years” on the back of fresh investment in innovative content ranging from dramas to soaps.

“There is this whole narrative that television is dead and it’s all about streaming,” Shankar said in the interview. “Television in this country for sure is not dead.”

Shankar also spoke about a robust linear pay-TV industry. “A large number of people are coming into the economic mainstream every year,” he noted.

“One of the aspirational items of consumption that they acquire, or they want to acquire, is a TV.”

Reacting on the magnitude of the Disney and Reliance merger, Shankar said: “It’s a monster merger . . . there is no competition…We have to reinvent the market and make it much bigger.”

Shankar was also quoted as saying that “dominance in sports is highly overrated” and criticism of Disney and Reliance’s hold was “somewhat uninformed because sports rights in this country are awarded to you for a frighteningly short period of time — it’s anything from three to five years”.