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Private FM – the new Indian teen: Down memory lane
A few days ago former radio jock and friend Vasanthi Hariprakash mentioned on her Facebook page that Radio City Bangalore (Bengaluru), that private FM radio in India had completed 13 years (started broadcasting on July 3, 2001) and hence entered its teens. Of course, Hariprakash or Sunshine girl as she was called, was an RJ on that very popular and only FM radio station in the country at that time, though not since its inception.
How time has flown with changes galore in radio broadcasting in the country. Let me reminisce as an avid listener in this report ….
Times of war stand out in a growing mind. My first vivid memories of radio are those as a five year old boy – my uncle and my dad started sobbing at the news that came in from Tashkent – the man of peace – our then prime minister Lal Bahadhur Shastri had passed away there. A few years later in December 1971, the excitement in my aunt’s voice as she breathlessly announced that Pakistan had called for a ceasefire of hostilities. I remember the negative comments that my fellow listeners doled out whenever we heard of Yahya Khan, Bhutto, Nixon and Kissenger on the radio during the days leading to and including and after the 1971 war. I remember vividly my friends cheering Mujibur Rehaman as All India Radio announced his arrest by the powers that were in Pakistan.
How times have changed since then – I remember as a growing up boy in Mumbai glued to the transistor, as the small radio receiver with medium wave (MW) and short wave (SW) bands was colloquially known as. Radio was the only form of communication (one way) that most people of my generation grew up with. There was no television, no internet and no mobile phones.
The voices of Amin Sayani and Hasan Rizvi are still very vivid in my mind. Binaca (later Cibaca) Geetmala on a Wednesday was an absolute must, as was the mandatory narration and exchange of dialogues on Monday morning at school of the capers of super crime solver Inspector Eagle and his sidekick Havaldar Naik the previous day.
It is about the period in the 1970s’ that I remember how all of us – friends, cousins, parents, uncles, aunts, used to sit around the radio on Sunday, during breakfast waiting for Havaldar Naik’s peals of laughter, and later the early lunch while we eagerly listened to the one hour bit of a film sound track on Vivid Bharati. The afternoon hour every day of the week was reserved for western music, mostly classical over a quiet lunch on return from school before homework and Saturday night for Saturday Pop music on All India Radio. A few of the ad jingles are still so fresh – like the one that ran ‘Mummy, mummy Modern bread..’ or ‘Harvik, Harvik whistle pop khaie ye’.
Cricket was another favourite that bound us all-parents, friends, teachers, principals and school mates, everyone wanted to know the score during recess and the physical training period. Many a time, a student escaped punishment when caught listening to cricket commentary during class hours on a small pocket radio by disclosing the latest ‘score’ to the teacher. Like a mobile phone is banned today in most educational institutions, pocket radio too was actually a banned item in school –too much distraction, you see. Remember in those days it was five days test match cricket and the odd Ranji Trophy match that was aired on radio.
AFST or Bobby Talyarkhan, Ravi Chaturvedi, Joga Rao, Jasdev Singh, Suresh Sarayia, Raj Singh Dungarpur, Dicky Ratnagar and Anand Setalvad are the names that come to mind, when one speaks of radio cricket commentators. Vijay Merchant’s expert comments during the match were like manna from heaven for the cricket aficionado. His Sunday afternoon programme on Vividh Bharati ‘Cricket with Vijay Merchant’ was a must listen for cricket lovers.
The short stint between 1993 and 1998, when the government sold time slots to private companies to run their programming is best forgotten. My memories of this period are vague – Times FM and Radio Midday are the only names that come to mind. There must have been the odd show that was great, but, not memorable.
As I said, a lot has changed, including my city of residence. Bengaluru, the garden city is now more of a concrete jungle. SW and MW are suddenly strange words. I listen to the radio only when driving or in a car as opposed to all day on a shared transistor, because the pocket radio required batteries which were too expensive to replace regularly. Rechargeable batteries were a rarity in those days. The pocket radio for a limited period of time had become a fashion statement, an item to show off.
Music of my choice with great RJ talk is now doled out 24×7 on not just one or two sporadic stations, but among others on Radio Rainbow, Fever FM, Red FM and a completely international radio station Radio Indigo. Kannada radio too has some lovely music and there are three stations that play Kannada music in Bangalore– Big FM, Radio Mirchi and Radio City which went Kannada a few years ago.
Prithvi, Shraddha, Sriram, Rubina, Disha, Julius, Melodee Austin, Shagufta, Michelle, Nathan are the people that I listen to while driving. The good looking Danish Sait on Fever FM and Rakesh with their funny impersonations have replaced Havaldar Naik’s peals, and radio shows such as Picture Pandey have replaced the mandatory movie soundtrack of yesteryear’s Vividh Bharati, but as I mentioned before, only if I happen to be in a car.
In the Kannada radio space, the very pretty Nethra on Radio City and the so very intelligent Smitha on Mirchi along with Rapid Rashmi on Big FM are a treat to listen to for a person who has just started comprehending a bit of the lingo. I have seen and heard Mallishka perform, and that girl has what it takes, as does Mumbai’s Mirchi jock Jeeturaj.
Hariprakash, along with Suniana Lal, Anjaan, Darius Sunawala, Suresh Venkat voices have joined those of Amin Sayani and Hasan Rizivi in my mind space – these jocks have stopped performing or perform during weekends as Darius does, or perform in other countries as Anjaan does.
The current jocks, many of them not so young, for some are even mothers and fathers in their mid -thirties, sound so exciting, make their show great. It is often these guys that make or break the company that owns their stations, and are to some extent responsible for a film’s fate. Programming is a lot more exciting, and a separate job function by itself as opposed to the songs played on request by snail mail. Mobile phones have made it possible to request songs in real time. The jock talk and interactions make the radio an exciting entertainment option for the listener.
Let us see what the new technology brings in. The third round of auctions should add a lot more stations to the country and create a lot more excitement in the industry that runs the most listened to medium in the world.
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.
