Comment
Television channels step into the Great Outdoors
The world is a communications village. And television is one of the media for facilitating that communication. Today it is no surprise to see the same channel being beamed simultaneously all over the world, with some tweaking to make it suitable for local tastes. In India television has exploded into our homes over the past decade with more than a 100 channels making a beeline for eyeballs.
This makes for a highly competitive industry with each player’s survival hinging on a dedicated viewing of its programmes, by a large and ever increasing base of people. That is its only source of revenue (apart from subscription fees). The larger the number of people who watch a channel’s programs, the greater is the possibility of advertisers getting interested in using it as a vehicle for advertising their brands. The more the advertisers who placed their adverts on the channel, the higher its revenue. The fatter the take-home packet on the revenue front, the more the channel can invest in better and refined contents.
TV channels form an integral part of the entertainment industry. By definition, entertainment, as the word suggests, is an ongoing activity. One that must be entertaining, enjoyable and most importantly, novel on an everyday basis. Repetition, on television, creates boredom and causes irritation.
“Oh God, I saw this yestraday and again in the afternoon!! I’ll switch channels and see if there is another one that is showing new and refreshing fare,” are the viewers’ thoughts.
In such a scenario how can a TV channel find the high ground ? How can it increase its viewership without taking a hard hit?
How can it make more and more people stay glued to its programs?
How can it do this such that it matches its change in its program content?
Which is the medium which offers immediacy, is communicative, is eyecatching, offers colour, is seen by a large number of people who are walking, commuting, shopping, or driving to or from work and offers short duration contracts and is not prohibitive in terms of costing? The answer if you have guessed by now, is The Great Outdoors, mate.
Take a look at the comparitive advantages that hoardings/billboards offer over other media vehicles. In fact, it would not be an idle boast if one said they are idle for television channels and producers who are looking at a good way to target viewers and specific audiences.
Newspapers: Newspapers offer the benefit of immediacy. But they are read only by their base of readers. A TV channel would have to advertise at a very high frequency for the program content to be known and viewed by its base of readers. Hence, in terms of reach and cost, newspapers work out to be an expensive option.
Magazines: Mags like newspapers, can be read only by the base readers. Hence, they are an expensive proposition.
The Great Outdoors:
* The medium offers immense repeat viewership of a communications message, without incurring any repetitive costs. About 10 strategically located sites, in Mumbai, would offer the advertiser a solution that would help him cover the mass of the audience in the city.
* In the great outdoors, the medium is the message. It’s the editorial or content ambience that determine readership or viewership of a medium. Billboards or hoardings fit that to the tee, they provide advertisements with a high “opportunity to see.”
* As far as billboards or the outdoors are concerned the audience has zero access cost and no threshold at all to receive the communication – except for the gift of vision.
* Due to the heavy fragmentation/ high clutter of media like Print and TV, the time spent on these media by audiences has reduced considerably.
*The Outdoors is considered to be a ‘mass’ media vehicle while all other media are increasingly defining themselves to a particular audience by content, design etc.
* Visual imagery can be enhanced through the use of top quality illumination and well executed creative, thus helping billboards achieve their promise as traffic stoppers. In the process, they well may help build quick brand awareness.
Savvy marketers at select television channels, have given a shot in the arm to the hoardings business, stepping into the vaccuum left by dot com clients who disappeared once the hype died down. Television marketers who have not used hoardings to their maximum potential would do well in taking another hard look at the medium.
Shankar Shetty
The writer is associate vice-president, Primesite (a division of Mudra Communications). The views expressed in the article are his own.
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.
