Are OTTs missing out on the youth ?
The number of individual internet connections in India rose from 550 mn in mid 2018 to 750 mn in mid 2020. OTT subscriber base after a successful lockdown, net binging, exaggerated boredom and unexpected lockdown bonanza for OTT platforms has merely gone up to approx. 29 mn as at the end of July 2020.
We seem to have merely skimmed the market surface. Are we missing out an important segment of a viewer base on which the entire logic and business case of OTT business should be based, the youth ?
The contents we are presently promoting on OTT are mainly
a. Established star based stories emulating Bollywood. Star craze and followings has been experiencing a diminishing trend even in pre-covid times.
b. Focus on crime, rural politics, mob and drugs based contents.
c. Bold and vulgarity both on screen as well as in the dialogues / language used. Somehow a perception seems to be getting evolved is that this is trendy and this emulates youth of today.
Are we too busy creating contents today for the viewers of yester-years ?
Market trends in the contents from youth point of view -
a. Even in pre-covid times, the youth viewership for cinemas, especially in metros and urban markets, has been seeing a serious diminishing trends, which unfortunately has been aggravated by covid effect. The trends seemed to be indicating preference for content based movies over the star based movies, which was all the more evident in box office response to many star based movies over the past 2-3 years.
b. TV shows and TV serials mainly target housewives. The evening prime time mainly has “family contents”
c. We have seen youth respond to reality based shows like Indian Idol, Roadies etc due to youth participation and youth relating themselves to these shows. The repeat of contents over time ofcourse has diminishing returns impacting successive seasons, but that is a separate discussion.
d. On OTT platforms, the favourite formula for contents seem to be adult / bold contents, crime shows (a copy from regional TV channel shows), rural politics and mob stories. These contents mostly attract audience in 30+ age category, a stage where one starts being “realistic” and “sceptic” towards life.
What attracts the youth ? Here I am sticking my neck out, as it is very easy to generalise, always a folly, but some strings run common even with passage of time and generations. We just seem to have forgotten our teenage ??
a. A youth would look forward to positive attitude and outlook to life. Not seeking an easy life, youth is happy to struggle and work hard for their dreams. Youth does want to believe that dreams and aspirations do come true. We keep seeing this in viewership trends for even age old TV serials like Suits, Peeky Blinders, Grey’s Anatomy, Brooklyn Nine Nine, etc on display on platforms like Netflix.
b. Romance and relationships, as against lust and soft porn / bold as we call it. This does explain why serials like friends, Riverdale and Sabarina still have young followings even today.
c. Youth wants to be a part of, or want to be able to relate to the contents, the characters, the storyline, etc.
Youth today does not patronise any hero or a star. They create their own stars from amongst themselves. Do look at crazy followings running into millions on ticktock. Youth is also punishing when they see someone getting “too big for his boots” or exhibits “unacceptable” behaviour. When a certain leading Ticktock star made some anti India statements online on ticktock, even before the platform deactivated his account, the fans exited in thousands and millions. The viewers’ message was unambiguous, “we make you, we unmake you”. When the same star later made repeated apology statements and assured that intent was noble. Same youth audience were even more forgiving. Faisu, whose case I quote here, once again rose to be the number one ticktock star until before the ticktock ban, even after serious fall from grace.
This viewers’ segment is very interesting, and thinks very differently from the way our logical and generalising mind does.
We professional content creators unwittingly don’t seem to be making contents for them, and they don’t seem to mind it. They have started creating contents by themselves for themselves. Their contents are anything from 30 seconds to say 10 minutes, a slot we don’t even consider commercial, but that is where their eye-balls are. This is evidenced in run-away success of apps like Ticktock and the stars it created, with followers in millions, a number most of our upcoming OTT apps will kill for. Now with the Chinese app ban, this traffic has got diverted on to Instagram, which is where we get to see glimpses of what this segment wants and sees.
The OTT industry cannot afford to lose out on this market segment. This will be roughly 80% of the online content viewership market. Presently the OTT apps seem to be fighting only for the 20% of the market base, and is individually ending up with 1.5 to 2% of the market share each. Exception being hotstar, but that always had sports viewers. If we are able to attract even 20-25% of this incremental youth market, we will be more than doubling the overall market base. This incremental viewers will not spread evenly, but be content based, getting directed to the platform(s) willing to see world from their point of view.
A food for thought for us “expert content creators” !!