NOW STREAMING EVERYWHERE
The lockdown has given streaming platforms a captive audience starved for entertainment
“ALL BUSINESSES ARE DOWN, BUT DIGITAL IS DOWN THE LEAST... OVER THE NEXT FEW MONTHS, OTT WILL CONTINUE TO BE A HIGH GROWTH BUSINESS,” — Karan Bedi, CEO, MX PLAYER
The coronavirus pandemic has resulted in a new entertainment vocabulary. There are InstaLive and Facebook Live concerts, Zoom classes and webinars. But when there is a need to escape the dreariness of COVID-19 permeating every section of our lives, it is films and shows that people turn to. With cinemas shut and television channels surviving on repeat programming, it’s OTT (over-the-top) platforms which are thriving by releasing new shows. Plus, unlike TV, streaming platforms are more accessible and offer a wide array of programming.
It has been business as usual during lockdown for OTT platforms. Amazon Prime released Panchayat, season two of its popular show, Four More Shots Please! and Paatal Lok, 2020’s most critically-acclaimed show. Netflix had two films, Maska and Mrs Serial Killer, and two series, the dark comedy Hasmukh and zombie horror Betaal. Hotstar, which upped its content library and became Disney+ Hotstar in April, released its original series Hundred. ALTBalaji and Zee5 jointly presented three titles, including XXX: Uncensored, while MX Player was the most prolific, releasing seven shows. The juggernaut of web series is not coming to a halt anytime soon. Up next for Netflix is period drama Bulbul, a series presented by actor Anushka Sharma and her brother Karnesh, and Anurag Kashyap’s Choked on June 5.
Grand Views
While most businesses have struggled to stay afloat in the lockdown, MX Player, an AVOD (advertising video on demand) platform and the top entertainment app of 2019 as per the FICCI-EY Media & Entertainment report of 2019, saw a few silver linings. The app, which offers over 150,000 hours of content across 10 languages for free, has seen a 130 per cent rise in engagement. Karan Bedi, CEO of MX Player, doesn’t attribute traffic to originals alone. “We have a huge amount of content
that had not been discovered till now,” says Bedi. This includes Hindi dubbed Korean and Turkish dramas. While MX Player’s ad revenues did dip, it managed to get 11 new companies, including Amul, Airtel, TikTok and even Amazon Prime, to advertise in the past month. Meanwhile, ALTBalaji, an SVOD (subscription video on demand) service, saw a 60 per cent surge in digital subscriptions post lockdown, and Hungama Play a 20 per cent rise in streaming since the beginning of March. OTT platforms, though, have been on an upward trajectory since long before the pandemic. Multiple players together created an estimated 1,600 hours of content in 2019 and subscription revenues grew 111 per cent in a year, as per the FICCI-EY report. Sports, primarily cricket, was the programming of choice, followed by replays of TV shows. But with Disney+ Hotstar’s prized asset, the Indian Premier League, suspended and all other tournaments postponed or cancelled, it is original programming that is flourishing. Indians who were already consuming around 8.4 hours of online video per week, a figure higher than the global average of 6.8 hours, as per Limelight Network’s August 2019 study, ‘State of Online Video 2019’, now have more free time. The country’s 723 million internet subscribers need entertainment. Bedi is prepared to appease this audience with his huge library and a bank of six shows, to be released in the coming two months. “Ad revenue will return and I think a disproportionate share of it will go to digital, and within that to OTT,” he says. “Over the next three to six months, OTT will continue to be a high growth business.”
Down but Not Out
Aparna Purohit, head of India Originals at Amazon Prime Video, says “To say that it has not impacted us would be incorrect.” All OTT providers have had to stop their shows—some on floor and others in post-production. “Sets were being constructed and people were out on recces [scouting outdoor locations].” Prime also has a stock of shows, which, in their case, includes international series. Its Indian line-up has new seasons of Breathe and Mirzapur, plus Bandish Bandits and the OTT debut of Tiger Zinda Hai filmmaker Ali Abbas Zafar with a political series set in the capital.
Nearly two months of no production will inevitably delay the release of some OTT shows, but the impact won’t be as drastic as on the film industry. Neeraj Roy, Founder and CEO, Hungama Digital Media, says “a change in timeline should not affect OTT platforms from greenlighting new projects”.
Nachiket Pantvaidya, CEO of ALTBalaji, believes that the service is still on track to achieve its target of launching at least 25 shows in a year. “Once things get back to normal, we will pick up the pace to compensate for this period,” he says. AltBalaji has seen viewers spend more time on its site/ app, but it has
“WE ARE URGING VIEWERS TO SHIFT FROM HD TO SD QUALITY TO REDUCE STRESS ON TELECOM NETWORK INFRASTRUCTURE” —Nachiket Pantvaidya, CEO, ALTBalaji
come with a deterrent. “Our primary objective is to not let our operations be compromised, so we are also urging our viewers to shift from HD to SD quality to reduce the stress on the telecom network infrastructure,” adds Pantvaidya.
While Stocks Last
Sameer Nair of content studio Applause Entertainment which has created shows for Amazon Prime, MX Player and Hotstar, says due to the lockdown OTT players have a “huge captive audience” at their disposal. “They say it takes 21 days to form a habit. So, with almost two months of lockdown behind us, more than just a habit would be formed.” But Nair also realises that OTT’s glory days won’t last forever. After all, platforms don’t have an unending supply of fresh content. With shootings on halt, OTTs may also have to fall back on existing content, like television is doing now. “It will equalise in the long run,” he says.
OTT creators are aware there will be new guidelines on set decorum which will mark a seismic shift in how shows are made. “It would be unwise to think that life is going to be totally normal,” says Bedi. Nair, whose two Disney+ Hotstar shows, Criminal Justice and City of Dreams, stopped production midway, is hopeful. “Filmmaking as an art form cannot just be functional,” says Nair. “It is an expression. Creative people are inventive and they come up with stories, ideas and ways to do these things. Art will always find a way and that will happen in the post-Covid world as well.”