Streaming platforms have diversified their content strategy over the past year and a half, moving beyond dark Action, Crime and Thriller (ACT) content to family-friendly dramas, romance and comedies that reflect cultural values, emotions, and everyday realities of small cities and towns. This shift, consultants and streaming platforms said, is aimed at connecting with a much wider and long-overlooked viewer base.

Web series such as Gram Chikitsalay, Mitti - Ek Nayi Pehchaan, Dupahiya (Amazon Prime Video), Ghar Wapsi and Thukra Ke Mera Pyaar (JioHotstar), Bada Naam Karenge (Sony LIV) and Pyaar Testing (Zee5) show this trend.

"Audiences from tier-2 and tier-3 cities are decisively shaping the next chapter of digital entertainment growth. We are expanding beyond metro-centric narratives and investing in stories rooted in regional ethos. This has led to deeper audience engagement,” said Raghavendra Hunsur, chief content officer at Zee Entertainment Enterprises.

The share of content in the ACT genres in the total streaming content has reached a saturation point at 43%, shows data from media and entertainment research firm Ormax Media.

“India’s streaming content is currently dominated by shows in the action, crime and thriller genres. As platforms increase their subscriber base beyond tier-1 cities, we will see a clear rise in family-friendly content,” said Keerat Grewal, head of business development, streaming, TV and brands at Ormax Media.

Increasingly, as streaming platforms expand their presence beyond metros, family-friendly stories will find more takers as ACT content lacks broad appeal, said industry consultants.

"Streamers have been aware of the political system in India. There are limitations to storytelling. In this context, Action, Crime and Thriller (ACT) emerged as safe and exciting genres. Data insights also supported the demand for such content,’ said Shrirang Nargund, an independent consultant on streaming business. ‘But content in these genres does not have a broad appeal especially with the Indian family audience,’ he added.

Even the treatment of Indian ACT content has also been unsuitable for family viewing, pointed out industry veterans.

‘‘Streaming content especially in the crime genre is handled so well in the west. There is so much warmth in their crime content. But the treatment of Indian streaming content in the crime genre is too dark to the point of being repulsive. This is unsuitable for Indians, especially family audiences,’ explained Saurabh Varma, a veteran film marketing strategist.

While only 45% of Hindi web series are set in small towns and rural settings, they account for 60% of high engagement shows, according to Ormax Media research. Besides comforting optimism and emotional connection, a key factor which has worked for them is their rootedness.

A case in point is one of the most acclaimed Hindi web series, Panchayat, of Amazon Prime Video. In its fourth season, the series shows the experiences of an engineering graduate who settles for a low-paid job as a secretary of a gram panchayat in a fictional village of Uttar Pradesh. According to the data shared by Amazon Prime Video, India, Season Four of the series in its launch week was streamed in 95% of India’s PIN codes as well as in over 180 countries and territories.

“For us, genre is just a way of telling a story that explores a particular theme. This approach allows us to tell deeper, more nuanced stories rooted in local sensibilities, enabling a wide range of viewing experiences, be it individual, family, or community-based,” said Nikhil Madhok, director & head, Originals, at Prime Video, India.

Increasing share of connected televisions (watching streaming content on TV) in India has also boosted the share of family-friendly content on streamers. In the past five years, the number of connected TVs in Indian homes has jumped four times. According to Ormax Media, this has led to a shift from solo viewing of OTT content to family viewing, leading to more balanced content offerings.

In addition to this, streamers are of the view that increasing share of family-friendly content is largely a part of a diversification strategy.

“The strategy is to have a diversified content slate. With connected TVs, there is a propensity towards a little more ‘inclusive viewing’. In this context, most of our shows have been covering upcountry and other geographies,” said Sony LIV content head Saugata Mukherjee.

Industry consultants said streamers must rely more on writers’ creativity than data insights to produce content.

Family-friendly genres such as sci-fi and horror-comedy, which are under-explored, can help streamers to gain more subscribers, they said.

For long, Punjabi pop numbers were known for groovy beats, catchy lyrics and the artistes’ swag. But the murder of Sidhu Moose Wala in May 2022 brought to the forefront the underbelly of the Punjabi music industry. Over a year-and-a-half since Moose Wala’s untimely demise comes Chamak, a musical thriller that tells the story of a Punjabi singer shot dead in broad daylight. When we get on a call with creator-director Rohit Jugraj, he says that the series doesn’t flinch from looking at the underbelly of the Punjabi music scene.

“Punjab is a land that reveres music the most. There, music is big, and the amount of money singers make is shocking. When money increases, crime follows. I have seen extortion of artistes. The underbelly of Punjab and crime are age-old issues; people are only hearing about it now. The biggest Punjabi stars don’t live in the state, they live abroad. This is not because of Sidhu Moose Wala’s [murder]. It has been happening since 1986, two years before folk artiste [Amar Singh] Chamkila was killed. Artistic jealousy is to the point that they can kill each other. Artistes have been shot dead while performing at shaadis, like Dilshad Akhtar was in 1996. What boils my blood is that people didn’t know about it till a global icon died.”

The Sony LIV series— starring Paramvir Singh Cheema, Mohit Malik and Isha Talwar—tells the story of pop star Kaala, who returns to India from Canada to unravel the mystery around the death of his father, who was a popular singer in Punjab. It’s evident that the story is not inspired by Moose Wala’s killing. But his death had a huge impact on the project. “We spoke about him every day on set. Not a day passed when we didn’t listen to his music or think of him,” rues the director. 

The late pop star was originally to star in Chamak. The director recalls, “I had reached out to Sidhu bhai for a cameo in the second episode. He had said, ‘Veere, yeh karenge!’ But it wasn’t meant to happen. When [his murder] happened, we were yet to take the show on floors. I have to give it to Saugata Mukherjee [head of content], Danish Khan [business head] at Sony LIV that they decided to make this show. After Sidhu’s death, I thought they would back out. But they went all in and said, ‘Let’s make it well.’ They gave me the freedom to tell the story unabashedly. And they decided to retain his mention in the series as well.”

Another reason why the show matters is the timing of its release. Coming amid the strong anti-Khalistani wave from peace supporters across the world, the show takes us into the psyche of Punjabi musicians. Major pop stars like A P Dhillon, Shubh have had to cancel shows due to the hate directed at them. With Chamak, Jugraj has tried to show that the sanctity of music and the passion for uniting people through art is the core essence of Punjabi artistes.

“The music of Punjab is pure. There are two states in India that focus on culture more than religion—Bengal and Punjab. Punjabi music is far bigger than politics. Artistes, musicians, filmmakers have all strongly condemned terrorism of any kind. No one stands by that thought process.”

The director hopes that Chamak will have a second season, in which he wants to capture Punjabi music’s impact on the global scene. “This is the year Diljit Dosanjh played at Coachella. His attire, his music are now a phenomenon, and that has been highlighted in the show.” So, has Dosanjh made a cameo in the upcoming show? “Maybe,” he signs off with a grin.

Chamak; (right) Rohit Jugraj

Mumbai: Leading over-the-top (OTT) platforms are continuing to invest heavily in original content production, buoyed by an expansion in audience base and strong growth in content consumption. According to market estimates, top OTT players have spent between $600 million and $700 million on producing original shows in 2022.

This amount excludes movie and sports content which account for a significant chunk of the OTT content expenditure. Amazon Prime Video, Netflix and Disney+ Hotstar are the top spenders on original content productions, followed by platforms like Sony LIV, ZEE5 and Voot.

In 2019 and 2020, Netflix spent $400 million on content, including on movies. In April, Amazon Prime stated that it will double down on content investments in India with plans to launch more than 40 new titles across series and movies in Hindi, Tamil and Telugu. The platform's content plans are on track.

According to industry watchers, OTT platforms are expected to increase their content spending to fuel their business growth, notwithstanding the fact that revenues are under pressure due to inflation and a global economic slowdown.

“The content creation cycle for OTTs is very long and most of the projects to be delivered in 2023 are already at different stages of production. The investment in content will continue to increase as the OTT market expands and users increase their consumption because of better connectivity and increasing sales of connected TV,” said Uday Sodhi, partner at Founder's Room Capital.

Sony LIV, which has tasted success with original shows in recent years, is upbeat about the year ahead. “We are very bullish on our original content plans and we have a lot of big launches coming up in 2023. We are also dialling up on the originals space in regional languages,” said Saugata Mukherjee, its head of content.

Mumbai: The Indian over-the-top (OTT) market has 130.2 million paying (SVOD or subscription voice on demand) audiences compared to 110.5 million in 2021, media consulting firm Ormax Media has said in its latest study titled The Ormax OTT Audience Sizing Report 2022. The total SVOD base has expanded by 18%. The direct SVOD subscriber base stood at 49 million, while the indirect SVOD subscriber base came in at 81.2 million. Over 2021, direct and indirect SVOD subscribers will have grown by 19% and 16%, respectively. The study also reveals that there are 119 million active paid OTT subscriptions in India., which translates to an average of 2.4 subscriptions per paying audience member. — ET Bureau

Warner Bros Discovery has put the plans to launch popular American subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) service HBO Max in India on hold, even as the company is looking at cost-cutting measures globally and working on merging Discovery+ with HBO Max in the existing markets.

The move has prompted the India content head of HBO Max, Saugata Mukherjee, to quit within one year of joining.

“There is no clarity on what Warner Bros Discovery is planning around HBO Max in India. Earlier, the plan was to launch in 1-2 years and the content team had started working on some great projects. Now they are not even sure if they will launch a service in India,” said a senior executive with direct knowledge of the developments. “All we were told is that it will not launch till the end of 2024. In a fast-changing OTT world, two-years is a very long time.”

Mukherjee, who had joined as content head of HBO Max last year in November, is expected to go back to Sony LIV. He remained unavailable for comment.

“Saugata has decided to leave the company. He is an incredibly talented leader, and we wish him the very best in his future endeavours,” a company spokesperson told ET.

When asked about the company’s plans for India, a company spokesperson replied, “The intent is to launch a combined streaming service, including in key Asia-Pacific territories in 2024.”

Earlier in June, Arjun Nohwar was appointed as GM, Warner Bros Discovery for South Asia. Prior to this, he was responsible for the launch of HBO Max in India.

The changes at the company have stemmed from Warner Bros.’ merger with Discovery Communications, after the former was spun off from AT&T.

“It’s a major miss for the Indian content creators,” said a top producer, who was developing a series for HBO Max in India. “It’s a tough industry and we were working hard for the last nine months. In our business, it’s a long time. Just because Netflix and a few other international OTTs have not been able to crack the Indian market, doesn’t mean that India is not a good country to work in. It's been unfortunate that their strategy changes every week.”

In June, after the merger got regulatory approvals, company’s CEO and president David Zaslav put in place a slew of cost cutting measures across the globe, to save $3 billion, which has resulted in the exit of many HBO old timers globally.

Earlier this month, the company laid off around 70 workers, or 14% of its workforce, at HBO and HBO Max. The company had also shut down the CNN+ streaming service in the US within a month of the launch, which cost it around $300 million.

Globally, the company has done massive restructuring, which has resulted in a shakeup of the entertainment industry in the US. These include the cancellation of the movie, ‘Batgirl’ and several shows.