HBO shuts operations in India?

There have been speculations in the industry that HBO, the leading English movie channel is going to shut down its operations in the Indian market.

Industry sources say that they will be handing over channels to Turner and STAR India before shutting operations.

From this month, all of its basic channel operations including marketing, programming, ad sales and distribution will be handled by Turner International India. Going forward from July, the distribution operations of HBO’s premium channels HBO Defined and HBO Hits will be handled by STAR India. Their home productions like The Newsroom and Game of Thrones will cease operations in India and will licence it to its channels.  The employees are likely to be absorbed by Star India.

HBO, Turner International India and Star India refused to comment on this move.

The Time Warner Corporation (Turner’s Parent) has always operated independently. Launched in 2000 in India, its distribution and ad sales were outsourced to Turner which is a part of the Sony-Discovery’s One-Alliance and subsequently Turner again. Over the years, HBO continued to handle its own programming and marketing. But getting pay revenues has always been an issue in the Rs. 43,000 crore Indian television sector. India is the only market where HBO was dependent on ad revenues.

Last year the channel launched two premium channels, in the hope that they would get more revenues. Against a reported target of two million subscribers in two years, the number of subscribers of HBO's premium channels, at the end of 22 months, stood at 500,000.

In this digitisation economy, the channel has been pushed through in India and might have some good days to come and might see pay revenues as a reality soon.​