The government has said that private TV channels, authorised and cleared by the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting (MIB), were most welcome to be part of Prasar Bharati’s streaming platform WAVES.

“Permitted private satellite TV channels are allowed on the WAVES platform,” Minister of State for Information & Broadcasting L. Murugan said in Lok Sabha last week in a written reply to a query from a fellow parliamentarian who had asked, amongst other things, whether telecast of private channels is likely to be “restricted” on Prasar Bharati’s OTT platform.

To another part of the parliamentary question whether the government had taken any steps to launch Prasar Bharati channels on OTT platforms, the Minister clarified that instead of going to private sector streaming services, the pubcaster has launched its own platform.

“Prasar Bharati has launched its streaming platform ‘WAVES’ in November 2024 to complement its traditional broadcasting (and) to showcase a wider range of content beyond what is feasible on linear broadcast channels,” Murugan explained.

WAVES OTT is the streaming service (till now free) of India’s public broadcaster Prasar Bharati that also owns and operates Doordarshan’s TV and Akashvani’s radio channels.

WAVES was launched, as per Prasar Bharati executives, to provide clean, wholesome and family entertainment, while offering support to independent filmmakers by offering a space for diverse storytelling. As per media reports, it proposes to use AVOD, SVOD and TVOD models for film consumption by its subscribers.

Prasar Bharati is funded by taxpayers’ money through grants and financial aid from the federal government. But some State governments too have ventured into the streaming space or are planning to do so.

According to the FICCI-EY M&E report, released last month in Mumbai, while the Kerala government has launched CSpace for Malayalam content with a pay-per-view model, Karnataka was gearing up to launch its own OTT platform to feature Kannada and multilingual content.