What's brewing on OTT for this holiday season?

What have you been binge-watching this week? Are your preferences also changing with the changing weather? With audiences cutting cords and turning to various applications to consume content of their choice, how are these platforms gearing up to serve viewers for the upcoming holiday season and the year-end festivities?

We spoke to some industry leaders to know what they were going to offer, and how the audience landscape was progressing with the changing times.

Netflix is presenting its content slate at the ongoing IFFI (International Film Festival of India). Speaking on the same, Monika Shergill, Vice-President, Content, Netflix India, said: “India is home to one of the world's most dynamic entertainment industries and we are excited to be a part of this vibrant creative community. We look forward to premiering a wide variety of Netflix’s global and local stories – including Neeraj Pandey’s thrilling series Khakee: The Bihar Chapter, emotional drama Qala, Oscar-winning filmmaker Guillermo del Toro’s much-awaited Pinocchio, and the Asia premiere of Season 4 of the global hit series Fauda – at this year’s IFFI. We are proud to partner with IFFI to showcase these must-watch stories.” 

As reported earlier, Amazon Prime Video launched a content slate earlier this year with their spends doubled, mostly in original movies and web series in Hindi, Telugu, and Tamil.

Meanwhile, Disney+ Hotstar is rolling out a bunch of shows and films like ‘Moving in Malaika’, ‘Mahabharta’, and many others having a mixed bag of drama and thrill. 

Speaking on the changing landscape of content consumption over OTT platforms, Manish Kalra, Chief Business Officer, ZEE5, said, “Content across genres has developed and piqued audiences’ interest greatly in the last few years. The quest for new, demand for variety, and an appetite for quality is constant amongst audiences across markets today. With the popularity of OTT soaring, it has been validated often that content that resonates with audiences and transcends languages, geographies, and demographics finds greater appreciation by viewers.”

“However, even though growth has been stupendous in the last few years, the industry is still at the stage of exploring and experimenting. The endeavour is to curate compelling slates, invest in mapping audience preferences, collaborate with enthusiastic and innovative storytellers, and create a robust platform to offer a seamless in-app experience,” he added.

With the current demand among people to watch true crime series, detailed dramas, and authentic content, the trend for this season is changing as the audience is evolving as well as getting exposed to a sea of content. 

According to Sai Abishek, Head of Factual & Lifestyle cluster – South Asia, Warner Bros. Discovery, “Well, it is very difficult to predict what audiences will like in the future. But our bets are on telling stories that we believe will positively impact the lives of people who consume our iconic brands. Currently, there is a lot of demand for core factual genres like History, Mystery, Mythology, Adventure, True Crime and shows based on actual events. We see audiences wanting larger-than-life stories from India and the world. We are investing in all key factual categories.”

On the other hand, Gautam Talwar - Chief Content Officer, MX Player, said, “Typically, it takes about 18 months to write, produce and release a series. Hence, as a platform, we have to actually predict what will be trending in 2024 as of today. What you will be seeing in 2023 is something that we already have in development or is on the floors. Differentiated content is the demand from the audience and that’s what we will deliver. Two key aspects that we are investing in are - freshness and uniqueness.”

Opining about the changing behaviour, Abishek, said, “Yes, they have tremendously changed over the last few years. We can see a clear shift in the audience's tastes in what they are consuming and how much time they allocate towards it on a regular basis. The great shift that has happened is due to increased exposure to high-quality shows and movies both local and global. Due to that our audiences are also demanding that the quality and production values of our shows be on par with global standards. And the second major shift I see in the way audiences are engaging with our genres often considered niche by the general public but is increasingly becoming more mainstream due to changing audience taste and acceptability, deeper penetration of OTTs, and also the storytellers evolving with the times thereby impacting the genre itself.”

Kalra said that they have witnessed a demand for both Hindi and non-Hindi content with the success of titles like Tripling S3 (Hindi), Rangbaaz S3 (Hindi), Duranga (Hindi), Hello World! (Telugu), Vilangu (Tamil), and Paper Rocket (Tamil), to name a few. Maintaining a healthy mix of originals and acquired content.

With OTT platforms maintaining a mix of originals and acquired content, it's a tedious and intriguing task for them to come up with shows that make the internet scream. Speaking on the process of evaluating and choosing stories, Abishek said, “We invest a lot of time in commissioning independent research and development projects for deep focus on specific stories. And of course, a lot of independent producers also pitch original ideas for us to evaluate. The evaluation is based on multiple factors such as originality of concept and treatment, the conviction of the storyteller to take it from paper to screen, successful development period, the budget range, the ability of the said show to be able to get enough audience, the marketability, etc. to name a few.”

On the other hand, Talwar said, “This is a very complex matrix and is ever evolving with the release of each show as we learn from data points with every launch. At a broader level, we do cater to a very large audience on MX, and understanding their current preferences along with having a hypothesis of their future need states is the larger objective that one has to fulfill. The finding process is still via new pitches or creating writer rooms for stories that we believe our audience is keen to watch.”

With 2023 knocking on the door, we spoke to leaders on the trends they see for 2023 in the OTT content cohort. Abishek said that he doesn’t think there would be a single trend of sorts for the category. He sees the market as underserved currently, and the audience hungry to consume and wants all kinds of original stories, formats, and documentaries in the future. It is going to be an evolution and a transformative journey in the next 3-5 years, he said. 

All the participants emphasized storytelling, authenticity and engagement to be the key ingredients for a successful journey in this cohort.