Comment
Wanted: More than just editors
The Mumbai attacks, for all their tragedy and pathos, were an unparalleled television event. It was news television that became the conduit of a shocked nation‘s horror and anger as we watched the terrible spectacle unfold in our living rooms. Mumbai was to be a game-changer at many levels – diplomatic, administrative and political. A year later, as the blanket coverage of the one-year retrospectives winds up on the networks, it is time to take stock. As the media focuses attention on the slap-dash political legacy of Mumbai – with many of the central characters of 2008 back where they were in 2009 – it is also time to focus the lens back on the news networks.
Any discussion of broadcast reform in India gets stuck between two poles: the controlling impulses of a state always looking to turn the clock back and take back lost control and the need to maintain the independence of news television. For all its flaws, the creation of the Indian satellite news industry has been a landmark struggle unparalleled in the history of global news and the fear has always been that any attempt at regulation risks throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Yet, some kind of a real watchdog there must be. In a different context, the untamed impulses of Wall Street‘s bankers that led to the global economic crisis are an example of what unbridled laissez faire can lead to. Fifteen years after the landmark Supreme Court judgment that freed the airwaves, India remains the most unregulated television market in the world and while this suits the owners and the editors in their no-holds barred quest for revenues, Mumbai underscored the need for an unbiased oversight body comprising all stakeholders more than ever.
Two provisos need to be added here. Much of the governmental criticism of the TV networks in 2008 focused on how television became the world‘s window into the ineptitude of the Indian state – too many spokespeople, too much ground confusion and too many operational details being divulged by the then Home Minister. Let us be clear. That was not television‘s fault. The state cannot blame the messenger for its own failures. In the early hours of Mumbai, television coverage did what it was meant to do: it brilliantly captured the scramble, the confusion and the reality on the ground.
The real problem with television coverage in the days after Mumbai was a more deep-set one that we are used to seeing in its coverage of other events as well; that of sensationalism and the new addition to the vocabulary of newsrooms: “aggressive” journalism. The networks, in varying degrees of complicity, became not outlets of information but channels of propaganda and the lowest common denominator. The same sensitivity that goes into creating the saanp-seedhi genre of news went into much of the post-Mumbai coverage with at least one top network talking seriously about the option of a first-nuclear strike on Pakistan. This was not a considered news response; this was the response of a petulant child with the candy of TRPs hanging in front.
The post-Mumbai proposal to provide the channels only edited and pre-censored footage of emergency situations was preposterous and was rightly opposed by TV editors and all those who believe in the institution of the free press. But it should also have been a moment to pause and consider how much of this statist counter-reaction was a result of TV‘s own impetuosity. What we have in the form of oversight today in news television is tall promises of self-regulation that are given with seeming sincerity but always fall prey to the weekly tyranny of ratings. Mumbai should have been an opportunity for genuine reform, one that seems lost.
Ambika Soni‘s relatively benign and thoughtful attitude to news must not lead TV owners and editors into a comfort zone of complacency. Personalities come and go but the problem with satellite television regulation is structural, one that goes into the heart of the unique manner in which the industry grew in its initial years as an illegal medium. There is still no overarching regulatory body to oversee broadcasting issues. There is no Indian equivalent of the American Federal Communication Commission and Indian broadcasting remains highly unregulated. Compared to other developed television markets Indian broadcasting exists within a highly confusing maze of overlapping controls. For instance, India is one of the few developed TV markets with no cross-media ownership laws. Such a state of affairs, at a time when India is fast emerging as a new global media capital cannot be sustainable.
In a sense, Indian television has continued to operate in a legal framework that is more akin to that utterly untranslatable North Indian word: jugaad. Jaipal Reddy‘s Broadcasting Bill of 1997 was based on British law after studying the broadcasting systems of six countries – USA, UK, France, Germany, Italy and Australia – and sought to create a new legal structure for broadcasting but disappeared into oblivion when the Gujral government fell. Priyaranjan Dasmunshi‘s draconian version of such a Bill is now on the backburner. Since the 1995 Cable Networks Regulation Act (which has limited uses), Parliament has only managed to pass one major broadcasting-related bill – the 2007 Act on mandatory sharing of sports feeds. And that only passed because of the immense drawing power of cricket.
The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting has periodically tried to fill the regulatory vacuum with draft legislation and summary executive directives/notifications, most of these designed to assert its control. It has consistently tried to put the genie of broadcasting back into the bottle. Looking at it from a historic perspective, the contentious twists and turns over CAS and the news uplinking policy changes when NDTV bifurcated from Star News are perfect examples of the minefield that is the current broadcasting legal framework.
War, they say, should never be left to the generals alone. Television, similarly, is too pervasive an influence to be left to the judgment of the industry itself. A year after Mumbai, the need for a genuinely impartial authority to balance the content and regulatory oversight that Indian broadcasting desperately needs is being felt even more.
(Nalin Mehta is the author of India on Television and a founding editor of the Routledge journal South Asian History and Culture)
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.
