Are OTT platforms turning into garbage cans?
Last year when we all got locked in the home, we all were in a continuous quest for some good entertainment to pass the crucial time. To have some good time without stepping out, people preferred watching content like movies and shows on their mobile phones, laptops, and TV screens. As the lockdown stretched legs, people’s hunger for good content went on increasing and they shifted to OTT platforms. When we get hungry, we might think of having anything eatable. And as the audience says, content creators and OTT platforms served them anything that just consumed data but failed to make their moments.
The closed theater doors inspired people in the entertainment business to think of new platforms to present their ready content. In the last few years, OTT platforms (Over the Top platforms), started taking place of DTH due to their large library and freedom to access it at any time and most importantly at an affordable cost. People in the entertainment business took the opportunity created by lockdown, presented their content on OTT’s with win-win deals, and tried to save their business. People say some movies or shows are so pathetic on OTTs that if they were released in theaters, there might be a hard-hitting silence at box offices.
In India, the mainstream film industry is called Bollywood, regional film industries like Tollywood are the main areas where films get produced. It is said that the production houses having a strong network in the industry, publish their content on popular streaming apps regardless of content quality. When we talked with some young film enthusiasts, they said, some Hindi web shows are getting popular just because of the trending web series wave, if the same shows get released as a film franchise, they will face huge losses.
Entertainment is a huge business, more than 9 million people in India earn their bread and butter by working hard to entertain people. The pandemic closed theaters and stopped the production of content making all these people jobless. In this context, if projects get released on OTT platforms, it can help all those workers financially and morally too. The harder getting business equations in the film industry are unfortunately forcing production houses to ignore the content quality and think of profits only. But as we know, content is king! OTT’s productions called Originals are ahead in the content race as they work on analysis, keep an eye on viewers changing mindsets, etc.
Are OTT platforms turning into garbage cans?
Are OTT platforms turning into the trash cans providing a way for the content that can’t mark its good presence on the box office? This question has many answers as an audience have different taste of the content. OTT Platforms in India, there is no such classification as masses and classes as masses turn into classes if they got served with good content and in a celebration mood, classes turn out into masses and enjoy their life at fullest.
A real question that arises here is, if originals from these OTTs have better content quality, why do they publish not-so-good content from different production houses? Don’t they care about their brand identity? If we dig deeper, the marketing strategies for Originals are much advanced and innovative than the partnered content, ensuring that the platform will remain in talks and crack major profitable deals with bigger production houses for their not-so-good content.
In our previous article on OTT platforms, Online entertainment platforms, a new king in the entertainment business. readout how OTT businesses took over traditional film businesses and how!
- Hrishikesh Bhalchandra
For The Enterprise World Magazine.
