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Against all odds, Prasar Bharati continues to swim upstream : Brigadier V A M Hussain Member (Personnel) Prasar Bharati
An institution that has been the chronicler and mirror of India‘s history is feeling crippled. With a tenacious CEO under a dynamic Minister of Information & Broadcasting, it is striving to reinvent itself to meet the challenges of contemporary media scenario. Many new experiments are on to change the behemoth called Prasar Bharati that cost the exchequer a whopping Rs 150 crore every month. This public service media organisation is one of the oldest statutory bodies with a hoary past. It is under siege and calls for expeditious intervention to revive the glory of the old faithful that is All India Radio. Doordarshan, the audio-visual arm of Prasar Bharati is always in the public eye with viewers asking for more sumptuous and scintillating fare.
The Organisation is saddled with a disgruntled work force of about 50,000 who did not get a promotion for decades. To make matters worse, there was no attempt to infuse new blood in the system, either. An out-of-the-box solution is inescapable to break shackles of archaic regulation. The definition of autonomy needs to be revisited to meet the upheavals on the audio- visual landscape, in recent years. Section 33 of the Prasar Bharati Act directs prior government approval for all regulations governing conditions of service. Every employee appointed before October 2007 is considered a government servant on deemed deputation and their promotion is in government ambit. Instead of being a nimble, vibrant media organisation driven by merit, seniority and ‘babudom’ rule the roost. Proposal for a Prasar Bharati Recruitment Board as mandated by the Act of Parliament vide Sections 9 and 10 of The Prasar Bharati Act 1990 is gathering dust in files while government persisted in stalling promotions and new recruitments for two decades now. In effect, Prasar Bharati is like a ship caught in the turbulent waters in the mid sea with none to care on the shore for the SOS of the ship-wrecked crew. Merit and flexible structures are essential for a dynamic and extremely competitive media sector. Meeting the content needs of 750 million people through regional and national infra structure and boosting DTH and terrestrial audience are complex challenges, CEO Jawhar Sircar faces, along with ‘Sarkar‘, the real power.
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A recent experiment showed how independence in Prasar Bharati can make an impact. A truly independent team with young professionals in DD News prime time has rattled the industry with ratings showing an upswing.  |
A recent experiment showed how independence in Prasar Bharati can make an impact. A truly independent team with young professionals in DD News prime time has rattled the industry with ratings showing an upswing. Doordarshan launched a big advertising campaign for the revamped time bands of DD News, DD National and DD Urdu. This was the first such campaign in decades. A little more attention and circumspection are needed at AIR too which got maligned unfortunately by recent media reports of alleged 
harassment of its women Radio Jockeys. It is staring at a PIL now. FM Gold channel, with practically no permanent staff, earns substantial revenue for the entire AIR network while private FM channels are yearning for popularity with smart young professionals even in small towns and villages. The recently appointed Sam Pitroda Committee has set itself tasks suggesting visible changes for reviving Prasar Bharati. There is a wealth of data and content in archives that can propel AIR to the top of the charts. The expert groups are offering many practical suggestions and initiatives on many fronts including technology, content management, financial independence, government relations and human resources. Dr. Pitroda believes that generational change can be brought about by radical thinking instead of mere cosmetic changes.
The financial situation continues to be precarious for Prasar Bharati with complex legacies. An unprepared bureaucracy opted for accrual system of accounting and enforced income tax while loans in perpetuity and penal interests soared.The government rescued Prasar Bharati by writing off large sums due as segment hiring and space spectrum charges incurred in the course of broadcasting mandated content, non commercial in nature. Income tax claims stand withdrawn while local bodies continue levying the public broadcaster with huge taxes on property of Union of India but Prasar Bharati has just been permitted use of the government emblem. This is a paradox since 50,000 salaried employees of government are using these assets for functions statutorily assigned by an Act of Parliament. Welcome initiatives of the GOM relieved Prasar Bharati from its financial crystal maze for now by converting loans in perpetuity as grants.
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The need of the hour is to professionalise Prasar Bharati with content-driven channels and professional-driven management owing total allegiance to Prasar Bharati to meaningfully accomplish objectives that were originally dreamt and scripted by the authors of an autonomous public service broadcaster. The dream is worth realising. |
Apprehensions often raised on the need for a government-funded national public broadcaster are ill-founded. We need an unbiased institution to bench mark initiatives on information, education and entertainment. At the same time, the government needs a media window to show case its policies, initiatives and views by running its own video and audio channels. Government staffing of DD News and AIR News Service Division through Indian Information Service is controlled by the Ministry. The easiest course would be to sever the current nebulous association with Prasar Bharati and declare them government channels on the lines of Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha TVs and leave Prasar Bharati to professionalise with autonomy.
The efforts of the government to empower through The Sports Broadcasting Signals (Mandatory Sharing with Prasar Bharati) Act 2007 get breached frequently. Private business houses that own broadcasting rights of World Cricket tours use pre-embedded feeds of commercials and cause losses in hundreds of crore to Doordarshan. Expeditious amendments would help Prasar Bharati and the government. Despite its huge work force, Prasar Bharati has inadequate structure of professionals managing its own security, assets, property, content, new media, revenue and marketing at the highest levels. The need of the hour is to professionalise Prasar Bharati with content-driven channels and professional-driven management owing total allegiance to Prasar Bharati to meaningfully accomplish objectives that were originally dreamt and scripted by the authors of an autonomous public service broadcaster. The dream is worth realising.
Will the Committee of Sam Pitroda be able to persuade the government to truly empower Prasar Bharati? On thoughts like this, we often remember Baba Amte’s saying “Faith is the promise of tomorrow” while the swimming upstream by Prasar Bharati continues.
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.
