A recent analysis of the Indian OTT audience and its survey has shown that there has been an increase in the viewership. The total increase is 33 percent in all. But there is a discrepancy in the viewership for various cities. For example, in the metro cities, the increase is 55 percent, but in tier one cities, it is 34 percent. And for other cities, it is even lesser.
There must be a gap that the OTT platforms are not being able to meet and are struggling to understand. The OTT giants are trying to diversify the audiences but not with enough result.
With originals, there is an even more disparity as Netflix is known for inviting controversies with its woke slate. Prime Video has had a bigger appeal in small towns and even in rural areas with its stories like ‘Mirzapur’ and ‘Panchayat’. Not having a niche story and incomprehensible storyline has worked out well for them. The regional ones are good in the case of Disney+Hotstar but they are still struggling to have a mass appeal in the small town areas of the Northern belt.
However, having a 55 percent increase in metro cities is good news for the platforms indeed but they need to stop scratching the surface and do something that attracts views from places other than these top cities. Critics’ rating will not always work regarding this and the OTTs have to work out the popular appeal in the same way as Cinema houses did. There must be content for people of every strata and every region and the day is not far that everybody will be a subscriber to some platform.