MediaPro becomes history as Zee, Star India end distribution joint venture

Broadcasters Star India and Zee Entertainment have decided to call off the 50:50 distribution joint venture that they had inked in 2010.

When the two rivals joined hands, digitisation was a far cry and their one- point agenda was to break the monopoly of the cable operators who held broadcasters to ransom charging them arbitrarily high carriage fees to carry their channels on their analog networks. Almost 15 to 20 per cent of their revenues went towards carriage fees, and the duo backed by their content might were determined to get better bargaining power.

Media industry observers say Media Pro was no doubt short lived, but it played a significant role in changing the dynamics of the TV  industry. It's biggest contribution was to break the monopoly of the the last mile cable operators and bring in a fair degree of transparency. It also led the way for other distribution collaborations that were formed such as IndiaCast.

While the MediaPro dissolution has largely the outcome of the recent TRAI regulation that disallows content aggregators like Media Pro to do bulk deals with cable operators, the erstwhile JV thanks to its content might had succeeded in getting the best deals in terms of channel placement as well as in terms of inking revenue share deals where they were the clear beneficiaries. "Even if the  JV doesn't exist, their clout will remain," says a senior industry observer.

In fact, one of the reasons for the TRAI regulation is to break the so called monopoly of MediaPro and other content aggregators. The cable operators had been complaining of a monopolistic situation where the content aggregators where bullying them to strike deals that were unviable for them.

"We will continue to be bullies," ZEE MD, Punit Goenka had said, soon after the TRAI regulation was announced. He had said that MediaPro was never envisaged to be there forever. "We had come together to fix certain inefficiencies, our agreement was not time bound."