Less cricket, more ads
LTHAT LIGHT-HEADED FEELING
eaving oil in—especially Ayurvedic hibiscus and bhringraj oils— for 30 minutes to an hour before washing one’s hair can be a chore in summer with the oil’s heaviness making one feel all hot and bothered. So I was quite sceptical of the promise of non-stickiness from Qi Ayurveda’s Chemparathyadi Thailam, which I started using in early April. Qi is the newest company of Rajshree Pathy, co-founder of Kama Ayurveda and founder of India Design Forum, with the idea to create Ayurveda products that feel contemporary. The coconutoil-and-hibiscus based formulation lived up to its promise though—it has a light botanical fragrance, without the usual heaviness and viscosity of Ayurveda oils, and leaves the hair feeling smoother. While the price—₹18 per ml—means it scorches a hole in the pocket, the lightness is worth the price. —Shalini Umachandran
Is there any sport that makes space for as many advertisements as cricket? Footballers and basketball players never stop chasing the ball, racers pause after the final flag is waved (or when there is a crash), tennis players only towel their faces after several sets of intense battle. The gentleman’s game, meanwhile—one of the least strenuous sports in the world—pauses after every six deliveries, so that other gentlemen can swiftly hawk pan masala, cola, mutual funds and various gambling/gaming apps. Every six deliveries.
As hardened—and helpless—viewers, we have long made our peace with this situation. We are used to the fact that a 20-overs-a-side game will have around 50 ad-breaks, including two forcible “strategic” timeouts (that honestly only exist to show longer versions of advertisements). The breaks are a part of the game now, and we are aware. With this year’s edition of the Indian Premier League, however, things have gotten even more grim. Every time— or 9 out of 10 times, to be precise—that I would switch on the JioCinema app and start watching an IPL game, I was greeted with an ad. Soon, I became appalled to realise that the ad was in the middle of the action. This was an ad placed additionally on top of an ad-heavy telecast, an ad being served just to me, an ad I had to withstand for 10/12/15 seconds just to get to the cricket. An ad that, unforgivably enough, made me miss out on watching a Jasprit Bumrah delivery eat up a batsman.
This is criminal. I have tuned in to a live match and am being kept away from the telecast—and hence consigned to watch a replay—because of an advertisement. This made absolutely no sense…. Until JioCinema started showing advertisements about watching too many advertisements. Last week, JioCinema launched an ad-free Premium tier, making their sinister machinations clear. Viewers would have to pay more in order to not be bombarded by ads that the service was adding.
It is important to realise that this service—that comes with an additional monthly expense of ₹29 on top of your existing JioCinema subscription—is not in any way an actual ad-free tier. An ad-free tier, like the premium plans on YouTube and Spotify, makes sure the viewer doesn’t have to endure any advertisements. It is a value-addition that many of us choose to pay for, and frankly I would recommend a paid YouTube subscription over most of the existing platforms, because of how much I use it. Yet the “ad-free” JioCinema subscription doesn’t take away the 50ish advertisements between the overs at all, it can’t do that. It only takes away the additional ads that it has added.
It is, therefore, pretending to add value by instead taking away value from an existing product—and then charging extra to restore the product to its original condition. JioCinema is treating viewers as badly as Travis Head and Shivam Dube treat wayward bowlers. We’re being taken for a ride and we don’t really get a choice.
Besides watching the replays, that is. It will still be interesting to see what percentage of viewers opt fo the extra fee in order to skip the ads. I must here warn those of you choosing to go Pr mium that it isn’t a seamless experience—even after paying the extra fee, every now and then I’ll be served up one of the ads I’m paying not to watch. I would be more outraged, but to get JioCinema’s atrocious and clumsy user interface working—even after an extra ad—feels like a hallelujah moment. Much as Virat Kohli does with the Royal Challengers Bangalore, we can only curse loudly and carry on.
Netflix has, meanwhile, done the opposite. It has created a budget tier where the viewer is opting to watch a few ads— instead of opting to escape them. The ad-supported tier is currently unavailable in India, but in the US, the standard “with-ads” tier is available for $6.99, or around ₹580, a month (less than half the $15.49/month for the standard rate), and in the fourth quarter of 2023, ad-tier members grew nearly 70%, according to Variety. As you can see, the Netflix approach has been inherently more straightforward. Instead of making the default offering worse, they’ve created a cheaper, ad-supported version of their product.
Sometimes, this value proposition can be dramatically high. Last year on Black Friday, Hulu offered a $12 subscription—for 12 months—of its with-ads tier. The idea of getting Hulu for only $1/month is wild, and that is the kind of gimmick that will obviously grow subscribers. Again, the viewers are choosing to watch the ads in exchange of value.
These ads obviously make more of an impact on those of us who don’t use cable TV, and rely only on streaming options. By watching shows while not watching actual TV channels, we are no longer used to slogging through endless commercials to get to the next section of our television show. We are the people who binge. The only time most of us watch ads are during the IPL and the World Cup or while watching news channels—which is why this JioCinema attempt at holding us up for ad-money ransom feels particularly egregious. They’ve hit us where it hurts.
Jio started all of this by first giving us the cricket for free. There is, it now appears, no such thing as a free match. Now we’re trapped, and, honestly, it may be our own fault for not being more careful. We should have done as those incessant mutual funds advertisements keep telling us in their hurried disclaimers: Read all scheme-related documents carefully.
Raja Sen is a screenwriter and critic. He has co-written Chup, a film about killing critics, and is now creating an absurd comedy series. He posts @rajasen.