Bloomberg Media returns to India via JioTV after more than three years

New Delhi: Bloomberg Media is back in India after more than three years, through a distribution tie-up with JioTV and JioTV+. 

The arrangement puts Bloomberg TV+ and Bloomberg Originals inside Jio’s live TV grid on mobile and on connected TVs through JioFiber and AirFiber, expanding reach to a user base that Reliance says has crossed 500 million. 

JioTV positions itself as a one-stop live TV aggregator with more than 1,000 channels and seven-day catch-up in multiple Indian languages. JioTV+ extends the watch experience to the big screen through JioFiber and AirFiber without an extra set-top box. 

With this carriage, Indian viewers get Bloomberg’s daily shows and long-form Originals such as The Asia Trade, Bloomberg Tech, The Future with Hannah Fry, and Insight with Haslinda Amin. These strands cover markets, macroeconomy, technology and deep-dive interviews from Asia and beyond. 

“India is one of the fastest-growing markets for Bloomberg Media, and we’re thrilled to work with JioTV to bring our trusted global business news and video content to a broader audience at scale,” said Roman Mackiewicz, Chief Information Officer, Bloomberg Media.

Bloomberg’s India journey has had two earlier avatars on television and digital.

UTV launched English business channel UTVi in 2008, initially with ABC News content. After Bloomberg came on board, the brand became Bloomberg UTV and later Bloomberg TV India when Reliance ADAG’s Business Broadcast News took charge. 

In January 2016, Bloomberg and BBN decided not to renew their licensing agreement. BBN rebranded the channel as BTVI on August 1, 2016, and the channel went off air on August 31, 2019. 

Bloomberg then partnered Raghav Bahl’s Quintillion Media to operate BloombergQuint across digital and planned TV. The television plan could not secure a broadcast licence; the venture pivoted to digital and rebranded as BQ Prime in 2022. 

On March 1, 2022, Bloomberg and Quintillion ended their equity joint venture and moved to a pure content licence. In December 2023, BQ Prime was folded into a relaunched NDTV Profit under the Adani group. 

This fresh move with JioTV is a distribution-led return rather than a licensed Indian broadcast channel. It aligns with Bloomberg’s wider Asia build-out this year, including new and upgraded studios in Seoul and Mumbai to deepen regional coverage. 

Because this is OTT carriage of a global news stream, the compliance stack is different from running a licensed Indian TV news channel or an Indian digital news newsroom.

As per IT Rules, 2021 (as amended 2023), online publishers of news and curated audio-visual content are subject to due diligence, a three-tier grievance framework and self-regulation. Aggregators like JioTV/JioTV+ operate within this framework for curation and grievance redress on their platforms. 

FDI in digital news (Press Note 4 of 2019, clarified 2020) says that Indian entities that upload or stream news and current affairs, news agencies, and news aggregators are capped at 26% FDI under the government approval route, with board and CEO Indianity conditions. 

The Ministry of Information & Broadcasting clarified on March 10, 2023, that when an OTT platform only hosts the digital feed of a TV news channel permitted under India’s uplinking/downlinking guidelines, as a medium without editorial control, the 26% FDI stipulation does not apply to that OTT platform for such hosting. This clarified treatment of OTTs as pipes rather than publishers in this specific context. 

The 2022 Uplinking and Downlinking Guidelines govern permissions for TV channels uplinked from India or downlinked into India, teleports, and DSNG/SNG operations. A distribution tie-up like JioTV × Bloomberg TV+ does not itself amount to an Indian TV channel licence. 

The JioTV route lets Bloomberg ride an OTT carriage platform that already complies with IT Rules for digital curation and grievance redress, while sidestepping the capital and approvals required for a fresh Indian TV news channel licence. The 26% digital-news FDI ceiling is engaged primarily where an Indian entity is publishing or aggregating digital news in its own right; MIB’s 2023 letter says pure hosting of licensed TV news feeds on OTT does not trigger that cap.