MUMBAI: A panel discussion at The Content Hub 2020 discussed the topic of generating audiences and building stickiness around the content that has been created. The panel was moderated by ISOBAR India chief growth officer Shekhar Mhaskar with panelists Red Chillies Entertainment head marketing Binda Dey, MX Player head of marketing and business partnerships Abhishek Joshi, Juggernaut Productions chief operating officer (OTT) Samar Khan, Filme founder Abhishek Shukla, EVP Lionsgate India executive vice president Amit Dhanuka and Shemaroo Entertainment digital new media COO Zubin Dubash.
The panel discussed how content made is of no use unless and until it reaches the right audiences. Getting them to watch your content is important. The panel also discussed how traditional broadcasters would retain their core audiences in view of increasing affinity towards on-demand OTT platforms.
Binda Dey said, "I have been working in the broadcast sector for a long time. With OTT coming in, the number of ways in which people can consume content has increased. So, it is not television vs OTT but about how people want to consume content and at what time. In television Live content has been a big boom. There has been a lot of innovation in the way IPL is being promoted by Star. This is a kind of gamification where you are combining television with digital. It leads to consuming the same kind of content across different platforms.”
Amit Dhanuka added, “The content that you see on broadcast television and OTT platform has a stark difference because the consumer that’s consuming it on television vs the audiences who are consuming it on OTT have a different sensibility. One medium reaches out to a very mass pool of audiences while the other is looking for edgy content that has a certain sense of storytelling. Television is not in any way losing out on OTT. They, in fact, are complimenting in some manner.”
The panelists believe that OTT has given new audiences. It is giving someone who used to watch television earlier at 9 pm an opportunity to watch the same show at any time. OTT has supplemented television audiences in many ways and also brought in audiences who are not getting that content on television. They are now watching content on streaming services rather than traditional broadcast channels. Originals has opened up a brand new audience that was not getting its content on television. Because in television there is a different number of hours and limited slots available to make that content. On the contrary, OTT does not suffer from that as they do not have a designated slot. The Originals that are created for OTT are bringing in more stickiness which consumers were not getting earlier.
There are so many different platforms like television, cinema and OTT but the question arises are these platforms geared up to face the changing media consumption pattern.
Zubin Dubash said, "Shemaroo has been there for the last five decades as an organisation. We have been on every digital platform one can think of. So, when we started our OTT story with Shemaroo Me, we had ten years of solid data and consumption habits around our YouTube story. Today on YouTube Shemaroo’s content generates close to 3 billion views every month and we have got around 120 million MAUs on the YouTube platform consuming the content voluntarily. When looking at the business plan of Shemaroo Me we analysed that there is a lot of unmet demand of content that is cataloged and the content that has its shelf-life which doesn’t end ever. We have launched it a year ago, and during this time we witnessed a lot of traction bringing customers to say that a lot of AVOD content comes from Shemaroo.”
Sharing their views on the same panellists believe that platforms are challenging each other with better storytelling along with better special effects and technicians working on them. Audiences are now expecting better writing, better performances because now consumers are open to new challenges. It is in fact pushing platforms to create better content.
