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BBC on the boil; some lessons for Prasar Bharati

Published

11 years ago

July 19, 2015

BBC, the public broadcaster who benchmarks broadcasting audio and video signals all over the world, seems to be under siege. The British government has launched a Consultation paper to decide on the future of BBC’s Royal Charter.

A number of questions and ideas have rolled from non existence of ‘Codified set of values’ to ‘not reaching out to youngsters’ the world over who shifted to on line accessing from fixed TV viewing. The Green paper points out that the last Royal Charter is one of the most tumultuous and numerous issues have arisen placing BBC’s people and practices to a great deal of scrutiny.

“BBC is a public broadcasting organisation and it is right that it’s values should reflect the views of public. This charter review presents the opportunity to consult on what a potential set of values might be.”

BBC’s several headlines making failures from “excessive severance payments” to a “cancelled report on Jimmy Savile” have called into questions of BBC’s governance itself. A model based hence on the Trust, which presently chaired by Ms Rona Fairhead with more powers to censure BBC as also withhold funds, a new stand alone regulatory organisation like Public Service Broadcasting Commission are being considered.

There are some major lessons from the Green Paper for our own pubcaster Prasar Bharati (PB), which is many times bigger in infrastructure and manpower compared to the BBC but on whose model the Prasar Bharati Act 1990 was enacted. With some of the provisions yet not acted upon, the checks and balances originally intended by the framers of the Act remain inoperative till date making PB a polio child despite of its huge work force and wasteful expenditure on its obsolescent terrestrial network, which even rural India is not interested in.

An important provision like public funding through license fees does not exist in India whereas huge public funding continues to pay to the tune of about Rs 1500 crore annually on pay and related expenses of the huge establishment, which the government conveniently handed over to a presumably autonomous PB in 1997.

The major plan expenditure is on maintaining thousands of ineffective terrestrial TV and less effective AM and SW radio towers. But not a single practical Board resolution of PB like leveraging dormant assets to fund content, power to hire and fire with flexible recruitment rules for creative professionals and an Independent Servicing Body have seen the light since successive governments continued to administer PB as an adjunct of government. As far as the word autonomy goes, it is an ‘oxymoron’ that does not exist in real life as one of our former MOS, I&B once remarked.

BBC spends 97 per cent of its programme funding on children whereas PB spends only about eight per cent of its total expenditure on content itself across all its TV channels. The efforts on kids’ programme by PB is negligible. With its strong creative capabilities, BBC developed numerous programmes and sold off to the world commercially like Strictly Come Dancing, which fetched ?20 million giving no space to other commercial channels.

PB is yet to commercialise any programme worth its name and pose a challenge to commercial channels in the recent past for a variety of reasons. Despite huge infrastructure and equipment, there is no vibrant audit and monitoring mechanism on utility of its huge inactive studios and mobile camera units. The commercial codes and guidelines of course are self restrictive, inhibiting any novel initiative in PB.

It is time the government has a closer look at the Sam Pitroda Committee report, which has some workable suggestions. The government needs to review PB with objectivity as the functions to ‘educate, inform and entertain’ also needs lead funding for quality content. PB caters to the citizens of the nation and other commercial audio and TV channels to the consumers, but the pubcaster yet needs to net more eyeballs for passing public service messages and codified set of values enshrined in section 12 of the PB Act.

As the Green Paper on BBC voices concern on reaching the youth that accesses anything on line at the time of their choosing, PB needs to revolutionise web streaming its content of all its audio and video channels as of yesterday. For TV, it is DTH and for radio, it is FM in India today, but the survival depends more on content, the king.

The potential values British government looks forward to for the Royal Charter are, independence, impartiality, high quality, efficient value for money, transparency, distinctive status, diversity and representative of the views of public. All these imperatives are aptly applicable to our Public Broadcaster too. The best that could happen to PB is a strong professional and truly independent Board with an efficient monitoring mechanism and powers to intervene along with an executive set up with ‘real’ powers to handle this mammoth organisation with complete verticals viz. Technical, Marketing and International Relations in addition to Personnel, Finance and Accounts.

Less Government and more efficient Governance by PB itself could set the pubcaster right.

Note: The author of this article is former member (personnel) of the Prasar Bharati Board.

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are purely personal views of the author and Indiantelevision.com does not necessarily subscribe to them.

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GUEST COLUMN: The year OTT grew up and micro-drama took over India’s screens

Published

2 months ago

December 23, 2025

indiantelevision.com Team

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.

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Piyush Pandey: India’s greatest adman never stopped watching, listening and loving life

Published

4 months ago

October 24, 2025

indiantelevision.com Team

MUMBAI: The lights went out on Indian advertising this Diwali. Piyush Pandey, the wordsmith who turned bus rides and roadside tea into unforgettable campaigns, died on Friday aged 70. Just four months earlier, at the Emvies awards in Mumbai, veterans had touched his feet for blessings while young hopefuls queued for selfies. He looked frail but smiled through every encounter. Humility was his signature; genius was his secret.

Pandey never claimed special talent. His gift was simpler and rarer: he kept his eyes open. The famous Fevicol advertisement—a Jaisalmer bus groaning under passengers clinging to every inch—came from a real sighting. The magic was slapping a Fevicol poster on the back of the bus. “Keep your eyes open, keep your ears to the ground and have a heart willing to accept,” he told newcomers at Ogilvy. It wasn’t a slogan. It was scripture.

Piyush Pandey

He joined Ogilvy & Mather in 1982 at 27, after failing at cricket, tea tasting and construction. When Mani Iyer, who headed the agency, introduced him to me as creative director in the late 1980s, Pandey’s deep, soft voice belied a fierce passion for the craft. Like Roda Mehta, who ran media at Ogilvy, he was generous with his time, patiently explaining the thought behind many a campaign to me. Those campaigns moved hundreds of thousands of crores worth of products off shelves over their lifespans.

His method was observation turned into emotion. The Dum Laga Ke Haisha Fevicol spot was originally made for a smaller brand called Fevitite. The Parekhs, who owned Pidilite, told him the ad was too good to waste. Reshoot it for Fevicol, they urged. He did. That single decision spawned a series of award-winning campaigns and turned Fevicol into the category itself.

His philosophy was disarmingly simple: love life. “Whether you are sipping tea from a roadside vendor or in a five-star hotel, whether you are travelling by second class or in a Mercedes-Benz,” he would say. Great ideas came from loving all of it—the chaos, the mundane, the sublime. “Be open to accepting ideas from the world. Be open to sharing ideas with the world. Learn to talk but most importantly also learn to listen.”

Piyush Pandey Pandey despised lazy advertising. Technology for its own sake was pointless; celebrities without ideas were useless. “Many TVCs are pathetic these days when they use celebrities. They are made very lazily,” he once said. For him, the idea came first. Technology could enhance it; fame could amplify it. But without a core truth, it was just expensive noise.

He believed consumers, not suits or pony-tailed creatives, made advertising great. “It’s when he or she accepts the product and emotionally bonds with it, the product becomes a brand,” he said. His advice to brand managers was blunt: stop being salesmen. Build brands, not just products.

I lost touch with him for decades as I went about building the indiantelevision.com group and all its ancillary services. Journalism and writing as I used to practice when I was younger was relegated to the background. It was during the pandemic that I reached out to him and requested him to spare some time for an online interview. To my surprise, he remembered me and he readily agreed. It was an interesting conversation about how Ogilvy was serving clients during the pandemic and how its creative edge was being maintained. We had agreed we would speak for 30 minutes, but the conversation went on for an hour. It was peppered with Pandey-isms. But that was the last time we spoke at length to each other, though we said hello to each other at advertising industry get-togethers which I rarely attended. Sadly, for me.

The man who taught India to watch, listen and love has gone silent. But his voice echoes still—in every vernacular tagline, every slice-of-life commercial, every campaign that dares to see India as it truly is. Pandey didn’t just sell products. He gave an entire nation permission to speak in its own accent, to find poetry in the everyday, to believe that the roadside and the boardroom could meet and make magic.

The lights dimmed this Diwali, but the spark he lit—built on observation, fuelled by empathy, sustained by love—will burn for generations. That’s not advertising. That’s immortality.

Comment

The slow eclipse of India’s media and broadcasting pioneers

Published

8 months ago

June 22, 2025

indiantelevision.com Team

MUMBAI: Once, they blazed across the Indian media landscape with the swagger of pioneers. Entrepreneur-led behemoths like Subhash Chandra’s Zee Entertainment, Kalanithi Maran’s Sun TV, Prannoy Roy’s NDTV, and Raghav Bahl’s Network18 weren’t just market leaders — they were institutions, holding their own even as foreign giants circled hungrily.

Today, those stars are fading. Some have already fallen.

Network18 and TV18 are now firmly in the grip of Reliance Industries and Disney Star. NDTV, long a bastion of editorial independence, is under the control of the Adani Group. Its founders — Roy and Radhika — have exited stage left, their names now relics of an era that once prized journalistic idealism.

Zee, once the crown jewel of Indian broadcasting, is barely hanging on. The Chandra family — once majority owners — now clutch a meagre four-odd per cent stake. It’s a dramatic fall from grace fuelled by Subhash Chandra’s ill-advised adventures into infrastructure. To bankroll these forays, he pledged Zee shares, opening the gates to lenders who came calling. The result: a sharp dilution of promoter ownership and a credibility crisis. The failed merger with Sony’s Indian arm, Culver Max Entertainment, only added insult to injury — scuppered reportedly due to concerns about Zee’s financial hygiene. A company once viewed as squeaky clean had its reputation muddied.

Sun TV, the fourth of the old guard, is also showing cracks. Helmed with iron discipline by Kalanithi Maran, it long stood as a symbol of stability. But the facade is now under strain. A family feud has burst into public view, with brother Dayanidhi Maran accusing Kala of wresting control of Sun TV through backdoor share acquisitions. Legal notices have flown, regulatory filings issued, and the company insists all was above board. Still, some reputational damage has been done — and the gossip mills are churning.

The result is a media map being redrawn in real time. Where once these founders shaped the narrative, today they’re either sidelined, embattled, or ousted. And as corporate titans and conglomerates take over, the question is whether passion-led media can survive in an era of balance sheets, bottom lines, and boardroom power plays.

India’s media isn’t short on ambition. But nostalgia alone won’t stop the sun from setting on yesterday’s giants.