eNews
Radio City presents “Cricket ka Blockbuster – Cup Par Haq” 2024 season with Harbhajan Singh
Mumbai: Brace yourselves for a cricketing spectacle like never before! Radio City is all set to launch “Cricket ka Blockbuster – Cup Par Haq” for the 2024 season. This time, the iconic Harbhajan Singh joins the lineup, bringing his legendary cricketing insights and charm to elevate the excitement. At the heart of this campaign lies the pulsating anthem, “Cup Par Haq” that embodies the game spirit uniting fans nationwide. Its massive launch across all 39 stations and digital platforms marks a momentous occasion.
Since its inception, Radio City has been a trendsetter in capturing the essence of Indian cricket leagues. This year’s campaign offers a perfect blend of cricket and entertainment, with the RJs delivering score updates, trivia, and engaging contests through the “World Cup ka Dose with City Ke Jocks” segment. Fans can participate in exciting activities both on-air and digital, with opportunities to win prizes.
Adding humor to the campaign, “World Cup Laughter Shots” injects post-ad break cricket-themed jokes that will tickle the audience’s funny bones, promising unlimited laughter both on-air and in the digital realm. “Bhajji on Mic” delves into the drama on the field, with Harbhajan Singh providing insightful analysis and exclusive match insights. Experience the thrill of the tournament with “Game Point to the Point,” a Sunday show highlighting key moments, ensuring fans stay informed and entertained. Immerse yourself in musical bliss with “Gaano ki Hat-trick,” featuring three back-to-back songs that add a melodious touch to the ‘Cricket Ka Blockbuster’ experience. Explore the journey of cricketing icons in “Stumps & Stories,” offering profound insights into their lives and careers.
Radio City CEO Ashit Kukian expressed his views for the upcoming season, stating, “We are pleased to bring ‘Cricket ka Blockbuster – Cup Par Haq’ to our audience once again. Radio City has always been at the forefront of delivering exceptional cricket content, and this year, with Harbhajan Singh’s unmatched expertise and our innovative programming, we aim to make this season too an unforgettable experience for cricket aficionados nationwide.”
Nayara Energy, an Indian private fuel network has joined hands with Radio City as the presenting sponsor for ‘Cricket Ka Blockbuster to make this a memorable cricket tournament.
With over 6,500 retail outlets spread out across India, Nayara Energy strives to create a delightful experience at its retail outlets and is at the forefront of innovation and customer-driven initiatives in the energy sector.
Expressing his thoughts on the launch of this latest initiative, Nayara Energy CMO Madhur Taneja commented; “At Nayara Energy, we are delighted to partner along with Radio City for our Mahabachat Utsav which is akin to Radio City’s ongoing initiative offering listeners a power packed dose of cricket and entertainment. It is a unique way of finding resonance with our consumers through storytelling and immersive experiences. As the largest private fuel retailer in India, this promotional campaign serves as a testament to Nayara Energy’s appreciation of our esteemed customers. Having onboarded celebrated cricketer, K.L Rahul as the face of our Mahabachat Utsav campaign we aim to create a strong resonance with our consumers on fuelling their dreams and aspirations.”
Cricket superstar, Harbhajan Singh, also shared his excitement, saying, “I am delighted to be a part of ‘Cricket ka Blockbuster’ this season. Cricket has always been my passion, and I am eager to engage with fans through insightful analysis and behind-the-scenes stories. Together with Radio City, it is an endeavor to make this season even more thrilling and entertaining for cricket lovers across the country.”
Moreover, the radio channel extends this multi-touchpoint engagement opportunity to brands, providing maximum visibility and connection with diverse audiences across various platforms. This season promises an entertainment extravaganza beyond just cricket. So stay tuned and celebrate the spirit of tournament like never before!
eNews
How short, addictive story videos quietly colonised the Indian smartphone
A landmark Meta-Ormax study of 2,000 viewers reveals a format that is growing fast, paying slowly and consumed almost entirely in secret
MUMBAI: India has a new entertainment habit, and it arrived without anyone really noticing. Micro dramas, those short, cliffhanger-driven episodic stories built for the smartphone screen, have quietly embedded themselves into the daily routines of millions of Indians, discovered not by design but by algorithmic accident, watched not in living rooms but in bedrooms, on commutes and in the five minutes before sleep.
That, in essence, is the finding of a sweeping new audience study released by Meta and media insights firm Ormax Media at Meta’s inaugural Marketing Summit: Micro-Drama Edition. Titled “Micro Dramas: The India Story” and based on 2,000 personal interviews and 50 depth interviews conducted between November 2025 and January 2026 across 14 states, it is the most comprehensive study of the category in India to date, and its findings are striking.
Sixty-five per cent of viewers discovered micro dramas within the last year. Of those, 89 per cent stumbled upon the format through social media feeds, primarily Instagram and Facebook, without ever searching for it. The algorithm did the heavy lifting. Discovery, as the report puts it bluntly, is algorithm-led, not intent-led.
The typical viewer journey begins with accidental exposure while scrolling, moves through a cliffhanger-driven incompletion hook that makes stopping feel unfinished, and is reinforced by algorithmic repetition until habitual consumption sets in. Only then, when a platform asks for an app download or a payment, does the viewer pause. Trust, not content quality, determines what happens next, and many simply return to the free feed rather than pay. It is a funnel with a wide mouth and a narrow neck.
The numbers on consumption tell their own story. Viewers spend a median of 3.5 hours per week watching micro dramas, spread across seven to eight sessions of roughly 30 minutes each, peaking sharply between 8pm and midnight. Daytime viewing is snackable and low-commitment, squeezed into morning commutes, work breaks and coffee pauses. Night-time is where the format truly lives: private, uninterrupted and, for many viewers, socially invisible. Ninety per cent watch alone, compared to just 43 per cent for long-form OTT content. Half the audience watches during their commute, well above the 37 per cent figure for streaming platforms, a direct reflection of the format’s low time investment advantage.
The audience itself breaks into three segments. Incidental viewers, comprising 39 per cent of the total, are passive consumers who stumble in and rarely seek content actively. Intent-building viewers, the largest group at 43 per cent, are beginning to form habits and seek out episodes but remain cautious. High-intent viewers, just 18 per cent, are the ones who download apps, tolerate ads and occasionally pay: skewing male, younger and urban.
What audiences want from the content is revealing. The top three genres are romance at 72 per cent, family drama at 64 per cent and comedy at 63 per cent, precisely the same top three as Hindi general entertainment television. The format rewards emotional familiarity over complexity. Romance in particular thrives because it demands low cognitive investment, needs no elaborate world-building and plays naturally into the private, pre-sleep viewing window where inhibitions lower and emotional intimacy feels safe.
The most-recalled shows, led by Kuku TV titles such as The Lady Boss Returns, The Billionaire Husband and Kiss My Luck, share a common narrative DNA: rich-poor conflict, hidden identities, power imbalances, melodrama and cliffhangers that make stopping feel physically uncomfortable. Predictability, the research warns, is fatal. Each episode must re-earn attention from scratch.
The terminology question is telling. Despite the industry’s embrace of the phrase “micro drama,” viewers have not adopted it. They call the content “short story videos,” “short dramas,” “reels with stories” or simply “serials.” One respondent from Chennai said bluntly that “micro sounds like a scientific word.” The category is at the stage that OTT occupied in 2019 and podcasts in the same year: widely consumed, poorly named and not yet crystallised in the public imagination.
Platform awareness remains alarmingly thin. Only three platforms, Kuku TV at 78 per cent, Story TV at 46 per cent and Quick TV at 28 per cent, have crossed the 20 per cent awareness threshold. The rest languish in single digits. This creates a trust deficit that directly throttles monetisation: viewers who cannot remember which app they used are hardly primed to enter their payment details.
Yet the appetite is clearly there. Sixty-five per cent of viewers watch only Indian content, drawn by the TV-serial familiarity of the storytelling, the comfort of Hindi as a shared language and the sight of actors they half-recognise from decades of television. South languages are rising fast: Tamil, Telugu and Kannada together account for 24 per cent of first-choice viewing. And AI-generated content, still a novelty, has landed better than expected: 47 per cent of viewers call it creative and unique, with only 6 per cent actively rejecting it.
Shweta Bajpai, director, media and entertainment (India) at Meta, called micro drama “a category that is rewriting the rules of Indian entertainment,” adding that the discovery engine being social distinguishes this wave from previous content formats. Shailesh Kapoor, founder and chief executive of Ormax Media, was characteristically measured: the format, he said, is showing “the early signs of becoming a distinct content category” and, given how closely it aligns with natural mobile behaviour, “has the potential to scale very quickly.”
The format’s fundamental mechanics are working. It enters lives quietly, through boredom and a scrolling thumb, and burrows in through incompletion and habit. The challenge now is monetisation: converting a category of highly engaged but deeply anonymous viewers into paying customers who trust the platform enough to hand over their UPI credentials. The story, as any micro-drama writer knows, is only as good as the next cliffhanger. India’s platforms had better have one ready.
