The Five Forces Model of Competition was postulated by Prof. Michael Porter of Harvard Business School in 1979 for analyzing an industry's competitive environment and responding to the same with appropriate strategies. This article applies the same to the Indian Direct-to-Home (DTH) television industry.

The Indian television medium has seen unprecedented growth over the past decade. At present, about 250 channels are beamed over the Indian skies, catering to a wide variety of tastes in numerous languages. Major broadcasters in the Indian television arena are the government-owned Doordarshan, and private players such as Zee, Star, Sony, Sun TV and ESPN-Star Sports. The broadcasters' present business model is based on a mix of advertising and subscription revenues, with the former being more dominant. Several Indian television channels continue to be free to air, while in the developed countries, most are pay channels.

The television channels reach individual homes mainly through the cable and satellite television distribu-tion industry, which itself has been undergoing continuous transform-ation. In the beginning, it was driven by small cable operators. Subsequent increase in operating costs and the need for additional investments to upgrade capacity for accommodating more channels led to consolidation amongst some of the smaller operators and also resulted in the entry of big players into this business.

The cable television industry attracted big players such as Siti Cable (part of Zee Network), InCable, Hathway (part of Star Network), Sumangali Cable Vision (promoted by Sun TV) and RPG. These organized sector players are referred to as Multi-System Operators (MSOs). They have established about 200 head-ends in metros and major cities, and feed content to the local cable operators.

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