Good morning [%first_name |Dear Reader%],

Broadcasting live sports takes a hell of a lot of work. 

A mind-boggling array of software and extremely complex hardware need to be seamlessly engineered together to beam, say, 22 people doing their business in a field three continents away right to your phone. 

I’ve always imagined engineers getting the angriest when a game isn’t exciting enough, even more than the most hardcore fans. “We put six months into this scoreboard feature, all for a goalless draw??!”

And how interesting a game turns out to be is only one variable. As a Twitter user so helpfully pointed out this week, there are other ways of ruining things.

At least the Excel enthusiasts were happy. 

And really, can Indians truly remain mad at some good old jugaad (workaround/hack) for very long?

Our first piece today, however, isn’t about the OG broadcasting giant that was Doordarshan (DD). Instead, it’s about a brand whose broadcasting ambitions aspire to the ubiquity that was once DD’s—and one that has the big bucks and infrastructural muscle to pull it off. 

I’m talking about JioCinema. 

The Reliance group-owned video-streaming app had the best time recently (the recent glitches during the FIFA World Cup come to mind), but it seems to be angling for a make-over. 

Let’s dive in. 

Rage, rage against the dying signal

By Soumyajit Saha

Viacom18 is the Reliance group firm that’s actually spearheading the streaming charge. JioCinema was moved from the Jio roster to the Viacom18 umbrella late last year and the move did catch some by surprise. Viacom18 already had its Voot app for online streaming, so why add another? 

Well, we kind of have the answer now. 

As per media reports yesterday, the Voot and JioCinema apps are set to be merged into a single app ahead of the flagship sporting event of the year—the Indian Premier League (IPL). 

Viacom18 had already started moving its various other sporting properties in the Indian market—like the Spanish football league La Liga, the Italian football league Serie A, and the American basketball league NBA—from Voot to the JioCinema app towards the end of last year. But sources in Viacom18 had at the time told The Ken that plans around broadcasting the IPL, by far the most popular sporting franchise, were yet to be cemented. Viacom18 won the consolidated digital media rights for the IPL last year.