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Prasar Bharati’s channel of autonomy
Seldom have government ventures succeeded in democratic India for variety of beliefs and prejudices. Inherent security has ensured complacency in government servants with invisible accountability resulting in almost every public sector unit crashing gradually but also becoming liability to the exchequer.
Such ailing commercial initiatives are numerous like Air India, IDPL and HMT to name a few. As for pure government, the performance is not even measured to stem the existing rot. The nation coughs up large sums on salaries to maintain archaic British systems founded on in fructuous and dilatory work culture.
Doordarshan and AIR, the once monopolistic moghuls of video and audio arms of Information & Broadcasting Ministry, with 48000 staff and huge infrastructure as part of Prasar Bharati are under siege from the commercial private channels. The staff is till date government employees on deemed deputation status with no powers to Prasar Bharati to infuse fresh blood or promote them in the last two decades of its existence resulting in a chaotic work force with rock bottom morale with no regulation of conditions of service for employees. Most programmers of Prasar Bharati have long forgotten to produce quality content, the cadre having been decimated over the years and the engineering cadre too losing sheen with administrative impediments and faulty staff pattern, with 1:10 teeth-to-tail ratio.
As of today, Prasar Bharati must be the only government funded organisation with 25 cutting edge vacancies of Additional Director Generals out of 33 and 148 Deputy Director Generals out of 151 in the programme cadre creating a painful vacuum of leadership that is meant for content creation leaving the reign of DD and AIR Kendras to lower officials or to broadcast engineers by default. Though well intentioned, Prasar Bharati, the national public service broadcaster, remains a still born child even today with shadow of government continuing despite an Act of Parliament that envisaged emergence of a BBC like institution to educate, inform and entertain people of India and Indian origin abroad.
Successive governments could not correct the infirmity due to inflexible approach and archaic regulations providing a sure recipe for self-destruction and resulting in natural downfall in TV ratings and Doordarshan seriously lacking audience connect. While talking of arm’s length in governing, Prasar Bharati, the successive government’s depicted its autonomy as an oxymoron which never exists in real life.
But for the first time ever, after taking over, Minister of Information and Broadcasting (MIB) said, “My aim was to make Doordarshan and state-run All India Radio first choice of viewers.” Living up to the expectations, the minister has blessed Doordarshan on their maiden effort to reach Indian diaspora through Deutsche Welle, Germany’s Public Service Broadcaster, by riding DD India, the international channel on its Hotbird 13B satellite with the reciprocal arrangement of showing each other’s channel in their bouquets in DTH platform.
‘Hotbird’ has a total of whopping 1117 free-to-air TV channels with 124 English language channels to include BBC, CNN, CCTV, France 24, EuroNews, Al-Jazeera to name a few. This satellite being the most chosen one by European countries because of its polarisiation and technical reach of 120 million TV homes in Europe, North Africa and Middle East, Prasar Bharati undoubtedly could not have got a better opportunity.
Being a public broadcaster, Prasar Bharati cannot compare itself with other commercially driven private channels of India as far as telecasting current Indian views and heralding the cause of fine arts showcasing heritage of India and cultural diversity through vibrant content being planned for ‘DD India’.
Government of India was spending to the tune of Rs 24 crore-Rs 30 crore per annum since 1995 to 2011 by hiring transponder of ‘PanAmsat’ later ‘IntelSat’ without last mile connectivity and insignificant viewership. Kudos to Jawhar Sircar and team that has ensured Doordarshan reaches to 120 million viewers across the globe to witness India as it dawns through a new image Doordarshan.
Countries like Japan, China, Russia and France spend between Rs 4000 and Rs 8000 crore per annum to ensure global reach for their international channels. Prasar Bharati on its part strongly aims at a content strategy considering cultural and other sensitivities of countries that would receive Doordarshan transmission with closer cooperation with Ministries of External Affairs and Overseas Indian Affairs as it rides on its maiden success in recent times truly blessed by the new government.
For Prasar Bharati, light seems to be at the end of the tunnel with our new Minister and his practical positivity. “Faith is the promise of tomorrow.”
(These are purely personal views of Prasar Bharati senior advisor VAM Hussain and indiantelevision.com does not subscribe to these views.)
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.
