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Carriage fees
What it is
Payments from broadcasters to cable operators and DTH platforms to secure carriage and favourable placement on the network. The direction of payment is the point - the content owner pays the distributor, not the reverse
TRAI has capped carriage fees under the tariff framework, and the economics differ sharply between addressable platforms and DD Free Dish, which sells slots by auction
Impact on industries
- A pure cost for broadcasters with no guaranteed return, and it scales with the number of platforms and markets a channel wants to reach
- Weighs hardest on new and regional channels, which must pay for distribution before building the audience that would justify it
- For cable and DTH operators it is a core revenue line, and one that carriage caps have compressed
- Caps limit how far distributors can extract, and digital distribution bypasses the toll entirely
- Landing-page fees are the premium end of the same relationship, so the ratings dispute is ultimately a fight over carriage economics