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Resuscitating Prasar Bharati
The non-coverage of the last historic test match of Sachin Tendulkar by Doordarshan entailed numerous explanations by the Information and Broadcasting Ministry. Prasar Bharati – on its part – painfully chose not to telecast the mega event because of an unsupportive legal provision that financially favours the content right holders telecasting such sports events.
Every household watched the match of Bharat Ratna Sachin Tendulkar with nostalgia and gratitude since the most respected cricketer decided to draw the curtains on his cricketing career representing the nation and relished the visual treat gratefully acknowledging “Sachin the Legend” in great measure.
The Sports Broadcasting (mandatory sharing with Prasar Bharati) Act, 2007 mandates all right holders telecasting or broadcasting through radio to share the signals without any advertisements to enable Prasar Bharati to re-transmit on its terrestrial and direct to home network.
During the ICC Championship Trophy, ESPN (Now Star Sports 4) as content right holder had offered to share the live signals along with commercials embedded by ICC already. Prasar Bharati insisted on a clean feed and chose to telecast the event without any commercials that resulted in average of DD National TVTs soaring to an all time high – higher than other telecasting channels – for all the five matches proving that people in India preferred matches without intervening commercials.
The Honourable High Court of Delhi decided the issue in favour of the Public Broadcaster. After a series of discussions, marketing inputs and considering the dynamic changes in technology, Prasar Bharati decided to alter the proposed amendment by withdrawing the issue of revenue sharing substituted by a very minor alteration in the Act for the mode of transmission and platform which would enable Prasar Bharati to telecast the sporting events of national importance on the dedicated free-to-air channel of Doordarshan, DD Sports, where the opportunity costs were minimal. Amendments proposed to the Sports Broadcasting Act, 2007 basically focused on the revenue sharing with the rights holders from existing ratio of 75-25 to 40-60 in favour of Prasar Bharati.
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.
Ever since the Sports Act, 2007 was notified, Doordarshan has been telecasting sports events of national importance on its DD National terrestrial channel and free-to-air DTH network in compliance of the Act. In all, 43 events have been telecast under the Act till November, 2013.
In 18 events, Doordarshan suffered a total loss where even the amount quoted by the revenue management company, that is, the highest bidder out of Prasar Bharati and the content right holder was not enough to meet the opportunity cost (monetary value of advertisement revenue on normal programme) and in 25 events Doordarshan suffered a loss where even the opportunity cost was not realised.
Doordarshan had no choice but to undertake these telecasts as it is mandated to comply with the Act. The 25 per cent revenue share to which Prasar Bharati is entitled has been way below its financial obligations resulting in outright losses. It is time to stop lacerating incursions by commercial interests and to amend the mandatory sharing of Sports Broadcasting Signals with Prasar Bharati Act to avoid any further financial bleeding by the pubcaster.
Since 1997, DD has been demanding literal autonomy enshrined in the Act of Parliament and has been juggling its financial management with a depleting workforce superannuating in thousands every year without a Recruitment Board in place for inexplicable reasons. It is programmed inaction that cost Prasar Bharati heavily with the Member (Finance) with only one officer sanctioned to assist him in his Secretariat, managing the annual business of Rs 5,000 crore. The Personnel wing too has a crippled structure to handle the workforce of 48,000 sanctioned employees and continues struggling with inherited legacies along with land, buildings, technical infrastructure, ponderous liabilities and unsolved complex HR issues to manage.
Self sustainability and financial freedom are issues that warrant immediate solution. Vast tracts of land held but not optimally utilised due to technological advancements in broadcasting resulting in obsolescence of Relay Centres is an immediate viable option for unlocking of land for value otherwise they may end up being exposed to encroachments by land sharks.
The large number of government servants on deemed deputation to Prasar Bharati is a legacy that warrants serious restructuring to match modern day broadcast needs. While it has surplus of trained engineering manpower in its terrestrial infrastructure, and skilled manpower to manage content its news related function is grossly inadequate. The much awaited Sam Pitroda Committee report is expected to offer ample opportunity for government solutions.
There is a bright light in the horizon with a positive I&B Ministry leading from the front, correcting inherited infirmities and guiding legal and personnel issues to operationalise practical proposals and resuscitate Prasar Bharati to a genuine and vibrant public broadcaster.
As far as autonomy goes, all major successful public broadcasters in the world have functional and operational autonomy. The BBC model continues to be the best. The Supreme Court of India while delivering judgement in the case of Cricket Association of Bengal in 1995 brought out the need for total autonomy for ensuring plurality of use, opinion and also to ensure a fair and balanced presentation of news and public issues, the broadcast media should be placed under the control of the public, i.e. in the hands of a Statutory Corporation or Corporations, as the case may be.
While dealing with the issues of airwaves, the apex court noted: “Government control, which in effect means the control of the political party or parties in power for the time being. Such control is bound to colour and in some cases, may even distort the news, views and opinions expressed through the media. It is not conducive to free expression of the contending viewpoint and opinion which is essential for the growth of a healthy democracy.”
It further added: “The right to use the airwaves and the content of the programme, therefore, needs regulation for balancing it as well as to present monopoly of information and news relayed, which is a potential danger flowing from the concentration of the right to broadcast/telecast in the hands either of a central agency or of few private affluent broadcasters. That is why the need to have a central agency representative of all sections of the society free from control of the government is essential.”
On the other hand, broadcasting system control managed by states is found to be inconsistent with the basics of full democracy all over the world. S. Jaipal Reddy during the XIII Lok Sabha debate Session II Winter Session stated: “I do not think that our democracy is so backward to need the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. In fact, in no advanced country in the world do we have a Ministry for Information and Broadcasting.”
For a vibrant Prasar Bharati nevertheless, there is a need for the government to provide financial and personnel stability and ensure that attained ad hocism will be replaced. There is a bright light in the horizon with a positive I&B Ministry leading from the front, correcting inherited infirmities and guiding legal and personnel issues to operationalise practical proposals and resuscitate Prasar Bharati to a genuine and vibrant public broadcaster.
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.
