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Prasar Bharati doesn’t need a Green or White Paper, it needs action & implementation
“If you think you know what your purpose is, but can never seem to gain satisfaction from it, then it’s probably not the purpose you’re destined for.”
Perhaps these lines by Canadian author who penned the fantasy series Morningstar aptly sums up the confused state of Prasar Bharati, which will be completing two decades in the next two years having been operationalised in 1997.
For although the Government keeps claiming Prasar Bharati is a fully autonomous public service broadcaster, it interferes whenever it wants including in senior level appointments, which should have been left to the Prasar Bharati Board the moment the Corporation was operationalised in September 1997. But irrespective of the political party ruling the nation, the state of the public broadcaster has not changed.
In comparison, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) – arguably having the most diverse, exciting and long history – keeps examining and re-examining its role as a public service broadcaster and independently takes its decisions about changes it wishes to make to reach out to more and more viewers in an era of increasing competition from private broadcasters.
Once again, the BBC, which will be marking its centenary in 2022 has come out with a Green Paper that examines whether it is failing audiences, whether it should be advertisement-funded or take licence fee as it has been doing, and even whether it should be putting on air certain shows that have drawn the ire of the general public.
Not merely that, but the 86-page document has been made public for the viewers to react as that would help it to decide its future course.
In India, although there were some reports on autonomy of the public broadcasters Doordarshan and All India Radio even before the Prasar Bharati Act of 1990, there has been just one report after the pubcaster was operationalized: the Sam Pitroda Committee Report.
Unfortunately, this report came out with nothing new that was not already being done by the broadcaster or had not been said by the Parliamentary Standing Committee in report after report, year after year. However, the real test is whether the Sam Pitroda Committee’s recommendations have been implemented. And there, sadly, the answer is in the negative. Because the biggest stumbling block to the pubcaster moving ahead is the government, which does not leave it free to move on its own and instead believes in the general principal of he who pays the piper plays the tune.
If there has been any movement within Prasar Bharati – like the recent appointment of a number of fresh talent to fill the huge number of vacancies or putting some popular radio channels on FM – it has been due to the individual action of the different CEOs or the chairmen of the Board.
At a time when the country has around 800 operational television channels and around 245 private FM radio channels – with the auctions for a massive 900+ beginning soon – it is necessary for the pubcaster to wake up and smell the coffee.
Doordarshan and All India Radio cannot be complacent by just telling themselves that they are the most seen and heard broadcasters in the country – particularly since their viewers are rural and they have failed to make much headway in urban areas, except for the FM radio channels.
Even after the media keeps pointing out these failures, DD for example has still not been able to ensure that the private DTH players or even its own FreeDish carries the name of the programme and a basic summary – something which the DTH players do for all the major private broadcasters.
In its report, the BBC has asked whether it is failing audiences and notes, “The BBC remains highly valued and well-used by the majority of people within the UK. But there are variations across different groups and there are particular challenges in reaching black, Asian and minority ethnic audiences and in meeting the needs of younger age groups who increasingly access content online, rather than via the traditional platforms of television and radio. There is also variation across the nations and regions of the UK. Charter Review will consider the extent to which the BBC is meeting the needs of these different segments of the domestic audience.”
Surely, if the oldest broadcaster is worried by such concerns, the younger pubcasters like Prasar Bharati need to wake up. The Naxal or Marxist movements or separatist movements in some states, could be curbed if the pubcaster played its role well.
BBC’s Green Paper admits that although there are funding options like advertisement-funded, licence fees, funding through general taxation, or a universal household levy, or mixed public funding and subscription fee, “no funding option is perfect and all involve trade-offs.” The Green Paper even discusses whether licence fee can be shared with private broadcasters.
Unfortunately, this aspect has never been discussed in detail in India for the simple reason that the majority of Prasar Bharati employees want government funding as that ensures them pensions etc. In India, the concept of licence fee was given up sometime in the late sixties.
While the Green Paper suggests some core values that the BBC must have, and undoubtedly the Prasar Bharati Act and Programme and Advertising Codes in India also swear by this, the core value that prevails is a rosy picture of the political party in power – at least as far as Doordarshan goes.
In fact, the Paper also discusses the issue of whether and how BBC should be regulated.
A close look at the Prasar Bharati Act would show that successive governments have deliberately failed to look at the clauses relating to a Broadcasting Council or a Committee of Parliament, as that would not suit the ruling party at the centre.
Unlike BBC, India has far more complex problems in view of the number of competing private channels, the large number of languages, and the cultural values, which change almost every fifty kilometers.
However, this does not mean that Prasar Bharati should sit comfortably, waiting for the Ministers or Secretaries to dole out instructions.
What Prasar Bharati needs is a serious look at the Sam Pitroda Committee recommendations to find out why these recommendations were not implemented when they were under consideration much before the Committee came on the scene, and also to radically examine the relationship of Prasar Bharati with the Government or the ruling party.
Additionally, the rule of the Indian Administrative Service babus has to stop with professionals from the Indian Broadcasting (Programme) Service or – since this service never really took off – of the Indian Information Service till the IB(P)S officers can take over!
MUMBAI: 2025 will be remembered as the year India’s OTT industry stopped chasing scale for its own sake and began reckoning with how audiences actually consume content. Completion rates fell, patience wore thin and the limits of long-form excess became impossible to ignore. In this guest column, Pratap Jain, founder and CEO of ChanaJor, traces how micro-drama moved from the fringes to the centre of viewing behaviour, why short-form fiction emerged as a retention engine rather than a trend, and how platforms that respected time, habit and emotional payoff were the ones that truly grew up in 2025.
If there is one thing 2025 will be remembered for in the Indian OTT industry, it’s this: the industry finally stopped pretending.
Stopped pretending that bigger automatically meant better.
Stopped pretending that viewers had endless time.
Stopped pretending that scale without retention was success.
What began as a quiet reset in 2023 and a cautious correction in 2024 turned into a very visible shift in 2025. Business models matured. Content strategies tightened. And most importantly, platforms started aligning themselves with how Indians actually watch content, not how the industry wished they would.
At the centre of this shift was micro-drama—not as a trend, but as a behavioural inevitability.
When OTT finally understood the time problem
For years, long episodes were treated as a marker of seriousness. A 45–60 minute runtime was almost a badge of credibility. Shorter formats were pushed to the margins, labelled as “snack content” or “mobile-only.”
That belief quietly collapsed in 2025.
What platform data showed very clearly was not a drop in interest—but a drop in patience. Viewers weren’t rejecting stories. They were rejecting commitment.
Across platforms, the same patterns appeared:
* First-episode drop-offs on long-form shows kept increasing
* Completion rates continued to slide
* Viewers were sampling more titles but finishing fewer
At the same time, shows with episodes in the six to 10 minute range started showing the opposite behaviour: higher completion, higher repeat viewing, and stronger daily habit formation.
Micro-drama didn’t win because it was short. It won because it respected time.
Micro-Drama didn’t arrive loudly. It took over quietly.
There was no single moment when micro-drama “launched” in India. It crept in through dashboards and retention charts.
By mid-2025, it was clear that viewers were happy watching four, five, sometimes six short episodes in one sitting—even when they wouldn’t finish a single long episode. Romance, relationship drama, slice-of-life conflict, and grounded comedy worked especially well.
This wasn’t disposable content. It was compressed storytelling.
In shorter formats, there was no room for indulgence. Every episode had to move the story forward. Weak writing was punished faster. Strong writing was rewarded immediately.
Micro-drama raised the bar instead of lowering it.
Where ChanaJor naturally fit into this shift
ChanaJor didn’t pivot to micro-drama in 2025 because the market demanded it. In many ways, the platform was already built around the same viewing behaviour.
From the beginning, ChanaJor focused on short-to-mid-length fictional stories that felt close to everyday Indian life—hostels, rented flats, office romances, small-town relationships, young people figuring things out. Stories that didn’t need heavy context or cinematic scale to connect.
What worked in ChanaJor’s favour in 2025 was clarity:
* A clearly defined audience
* Tight episode lengths
* Storytelling that prioritised emotion and pace over spectacle
While several platforms rushed to copy global micro-drama formats, ChanaJor stayed rooted in familiar Indian settings and conflicts. That familiarity mattered. Viewers didn’t have to “enter” the world of the show—it already felt like theirs.
Why audiences started responding differently
One of the biggest misconceptions going into 2025 was that audiences wanted shorter content because their attention spans had reduced. That wasn’t entirely true.
What viewers actually wanted was meaningful payoff per minute.
On platforms like ChanaJor, episodes didn’t waste time setting the mood for ten minutes. Conflicts arrived early. Characters were recognisable within moments. Emotional hooks landed fast.
A typical consumption pattern looked like real life:
* One episode during a break
* Two more before sleeping
* A few the next day
This is how viewing habits are built—not through marketing spends, but through comfort and consistency.
Viewers came back not because every show was a blockbuster, but because they knew what kind of experience to expect.
2025 was also the year OTT faced business reality
The other big change in 2025 was on the business side. Subscriber growth slowed. Discounts stopped hiding churn. Customer acquisition costs rose.
Platforms were forced to ask harder questions:
* Are viewers finishing what they start?
* Are they returning without reminders?
* Is this content worth what we’re spending on it?
This is where micro-drama began outperforming expectations. A well-written short series could deliver sustained engagement without massive budgets. It didn’t peak for one weekend and disappear—it stayed alive through repeat viewing.
Platforms like ChanaJor benefited because they weren’t chasing inflated launch numbers. The focus was on consistency and retention, not noise.
Failures Became Visible Faster
2025 also exposed weaknesses brutally.
Several platforms assumed micro-drama was a shortcut—short episodes, quick shoots, instant traction. What they discovered was that bad writing fails faster in short formats than in long ones.
Viewers dropped off within minutes. Episodes were abandoned mid-way. Weak stories had nowhere to hide.
Micro-drama didn’t forgive laziness. It amplified it.
The platforms that survived were the ones that treated short storytelling with the same seriousness as long-form—sometimes more.
OTT Stopped Chasing Prestige and Started Chasing Habit
Perhaps the most important shift in 2025 wasn’t technical or creative—it was psychological.
OTT stopped trying to look like cinema. It stopped chasing validation through scale and awards alone. It began behaving like what it actually is in people’s lives: a daily companion.
Platforms like ChanaJor found their space here because that mindset was already baked in. The goal wasn’t to dominate a weekend launch. It was to quietly become part of someone’s everyday viewing routine.
That shift changed everything—from release strategies to how success was measured.
What 2025 Ultimately Taught the Industry
By the end of the year, three truths were impossible to ignore:
* Time is the most valuable thing a viewer gives you
* Retention matters more than reach
* Format must follow behaviour, not ego
Micro-drama didn’t take over because it was fashionable. It took over because it fit real life.
Looking Ahead
Micro-drama is not replacing long-form storytelling. It is redefining the baseline of engagement.
Longer shows will survive—but only when they earn their length. Short-form fiction will continue to evolve, becoming sharper, more emotionally confident, and better written.
Platforms like ChanaJor have shown that it’s possible to grow without shouting—by understanding the audience, respecting their time, and telling stories that feel real.
2025 wasn’t the year OTT became smaller. It was the year it became smarter.
Note: The views expressed in this article are solely the author’s and do not necessarily reflect our own.
