Primetime Viewing. Is That Still A Thing?

For a long time, 9pm TV in India was synonymous with watching Amitabh Bachchan host the biggest game show of all times — Kaun Banega Crorepati. There will be few amongst us who haven’t heard or watched Big B turn on his charm for commoners striving to win on his game show. The show was aired at 9pm from Monday to Friday on Star Plus and families were known to rush home in time or finish their chores in time to catch the primetime airing of the show. It just wasn’t the same watching the repeat.

Cut to present day. TV is mobile now. That may sound confusing, but what I mean is television can be watched on the go now. Live television can be watched on the go. With the internet and cheaper data wave that gripped the nation a couple of years ago, people are not shy of using their 4G data to catch up on their favourite soaps and game shows while stuck in traffic or while commuting long hours in the local train. While 3G internet and data was too expensive to use, 4G and the launch of Reliance Jio changed the landscape completely. The race to gain maximum market share led to a free fall in data tariffs and a win-win situation for Indian consumers everywhere. Gone are the days when sd cards for mobiles, preloaded with the latest pirated movies, could be traded at the local panwala. Almost everyone today streams the content online.

Streaming services in India

For a long time when the world was ‘Netflix and chilling’, Indians were only just waking up to the joys of streaming video content on the go. India has been one of the top 5 markets for YouTube in terms of content generation. YouTube has been a source of gossip and entertainment industry videos for a long time now. Even when internet connectivity on the go was poor, the platform was optimised to stream videos downsized to work on the lower quality network. But today, India is also one of the most attractive markets for international premium content streaming and content generation companies like Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, HBO Go and Hulu.

While Netflix and Amazon Prime Video have ventured into India on their own, HBO Go operates in India through their partnership with Hotstar, an Indian content streaming service, part of the larger Star TV network. The international streaming services, keeping in mind India’s modest internet infrastructure also tweaked their platforms to include a ‘download-and-watch-on-the-go’ button to encourage more and more Indian consumers to use their services.

Further, since the smartphone had long since transitioned to being a media viewing device even before internet and data become easily accessible. Indian TV companies also saw the opportunity to launch platforms where their consumers could watch regular scheduled programming, albeit on the go and at a time suitable to the consumer. The best thing that came out of this change was the we no longer had to fight our mothers over the remote, to choose between the latest episode of Modern Family and Yeh Hai Mohabbatein! Hotstar, Voot, Zee5, Alt Balaji have all launched their video streaming platforms to cater to their evolving customers. Technology or affordability isn’t a concern anymore. Competing with Netflix and Amazon Prime Video, streaming platforms are. Now focusing on quality content. Original series made and launched exclusively on the platforms is the new normal with a wide audience too.

So what has changed?

Indians still love watching television.
Since 2016, TV viewership in India has shot up by 12%, according to the Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC)’s Broadcast India survey. This indicates that despite the proliferation of smartphones and cheap data, which have fuelled the rise of on-demand entertainment networks like Hotstar and Netflix, Indians remain invested in television sets.

BARC, which monitors TV ownership and viewership habits in India, published the results of a consumer survey in July 2018. The survey report indicates a 7.5% increase in the number of TV-owning households across India to 197 million in 2018. The number of viewers also rose by 7.2% to 836 million. In comparison, Hotstar, the leading over the top video streaming platform in India, has just a little over 60 million users.

“India is a country driven by family viewing and this shows in the increase in the number of TV households,” Partho Dasgupta, CEO of BARC India, said in a statement. On average, Indians spent 3 hours 44 minutes on the medium daily in 2018–4 hours and 6 minutes in urban India and 3 hours, 27 minutes in rural India. These numbers mean that television still accounts for the largest share (45%) of annual advertising revenue even, though the medium hasn’t grown much in the last two years, according to 2017 estimates by GroupM.

Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Hostar — the biggest video streaming platforms, have been aggressively advertising their content which caters specifically to the Indian audience. Hoardings with posters of the latest shows can be seen on every road and highway in the city. Hotstar had about 70 percent of the on-demand local streaming services market earlier this year, according to estimates by research firm Jana. The three-and-a-half-year-old service has 150 million monthly active users, CEO Ajit Mohan told CNBC in an interview. Netflix, by contrast, has fewer than one million subscribers in the country, according to industry estimates.

To add as many active users as possible, streaming services have been tying up with telecom service providers in a manner of upselling internet data packs. This has been helping users discover content from the streaming services. Given that the telecom industry is still competing to see who occupies the top spot in India, consumers are enjoying low cost data packs with deep discounts on services of premium streaming platforms as well. While Amazon Prime Video annual membership is on offer with leading telecom services providers, certain others are offering free Netflix service for the first 2 months free for premium paying customers. Currently, the telecom operators absorbing the cost of the paid subscription for customers. Industry experts as well as the telcos agree that these offers will not go on for long. Voot, Hotstar and other home-grown platforms, unlike Netflix and Amazon, distribute nearly 80 percent of their catalog at no charge to customers.

The trends in viewing have shown that Indians are showing a similar appetite for regional and original content. Alphabet’s YouTube, which had 225 million monthly active users in India late last year, witnessed a surge in demand for content in South Indian languages, according to Satya Raghavan who heads entertainment at the platform. Following the launch of Reliance Jio, Hotstar saw new users searching the platform for vernacular content, Sidharth Jain, the former creative producer of Hotstar and a current consultant for several internet video services, told CNBC. Hotstar, which exclusively offers several shows from HBO, Showtime, ABC, and Fox in the country, also provides a host of TV shows in regional languages that it has borrowed from more than 55 channels operated by Star India. Netflix and Amazon Prime Video are also not to be left far behind. Netflix’s Indian original content Sacred Games, based on a novel by Vikram Chandra, has been a big hit and the Radhika Apte-starrer Ghoul is also gaining traction. Amazon Prime Video has launched Inside Edge (starting Vivek Oberoi), Breathe (starring R Madhavan) and Laakhon Mein Ek (written by Biswa Kalyan and one of the highest rated Indian original series on the web). Prime Video also recently launched Comicstaan where India’s top comedians are seen scouting for new talent.

So is primetime viewing still a thing in India?

It still is, yes. But things are changing rapidly. Local production house Shemaroo, Chinese giant Alibaba, and Facebook are said to plan entries into the local streaming market soon, too. Eros Now’s digital wing has emerged as the growth engine of the company. For the quarter ended June 2018, digital revenues grew 34.3% year-on-year to $26.6 million. This accounted for 41% of the company’s gross revenue. This digital dominance is a marked departure from the company’s traditional reliance on revenues from movie theatres and television syndication. Over the last year, Eros’ digital revenues have outpaced theatre revenues in three quarters. YouTube originals has also announced plans to enter India.

In the coming months, the focus is definitely going to be on Indian original content and the manner in which it is advertised amongst the masses. After Saif Ali Khan starred in Sacred Games and Radhika Apte ruling the roost in the Netflix camp, we must expect more A list

actors and actresses looking favorably at this platform as well.