Shailesh Kapoor: Need focus on content development for stable growth

By Shailesh Kapoor

Unless we witness an unlikely, highly dramatic turnaround in the next three months, 2016 is set to be one of the toughest years in the history of the Indian entertainment business. And that’s true for all sectors of the business, barring radio.

Television has struggled to cover new grounds this year. A handful of FTA channels launched during the year as a consequence of rural ratings released in October 2015. But there hasn’t been much else to shout about. Content remains stagnant, viewership is dipping or stagnant in most genres, and viewer dissatisfaction is on the rise.

The Hindi film industry is in its toughest phase in more than a decade, perhaps two decades. Revenues are stagnant and footfalls are dipping. Audiences are choosing to stay away from the theatres with escalating ticket prices and the content not matching up.

But it’s the third sector that was expected to have a watershed year, and that’s not happened either. Original digital content, delivered via OTT platforms and YouTube, was tipped to take 2016 by storm, a sentiment that came in after the roaring success of web-series like TVF Pitchers and Permanent Roommates, and the rise of AIB, last year. But that’s not happened either. There is a lot more volume out there – more than 50 web-series launched this year – but the quality has been disappointing, and nothing has stood out enough to be called game-changing.

Then there are broadcaster-backed OTT platforms that primarily run on television content or sports. Some of them have tried original content, but with no real success.

Three different sectors, facing different challenges at different stages of their lifecycles. But there’s something common to these challenges: They all arise from an industry mindset that discourages content development. And I use the word development in the most specific sense of the word – nurturing an idea till it reaches the point where no more nurturing is needed.

We seem to be in perpetual hurry. To announce, to launch, to make, to market. Content development should be the bedrock on which production and marketing are mounted. But that’s clearly not the case.

Let’s take the film industry’s example first. The business is in an absolute tight spot. The business model is under question and audiences have to be wooed all over again. But if you track the trade news over the last week or two, there are announcements and more announcements. Some of these are about films releasing in end 2018, more than two years from today.

While there’s nothing wrong in blocking the big holiday weekends in advance, most, if not all, projects announced for late 2017 and 2018 do not have a ready script as of today. There are high chances some of these projects will take off with content flaws arising due to lack of adequate development work. Yes, there are pockets in the film industry where content development is encouraged, but that accounts for less than a dozen films a year, too small to change the operating “rules” of the industry.

In television, there’s a lot of development work before a show gets commissioned. That’s a culture the big channels have championed over the last two decades. But this work is typically centered around the first 3-6 months of the story. But running dailies past that period take up more than 80% of GEC prime time, and ongoing development work on them is negligible, if not entirely absent. There’s no nurturing, just breathless writing.

The digital content sector is still evolving its culture. But there seems to some kind of a trigger-happy approach going around. Ideas are being greenlit on the strength of being edgy and not-for-TV. But a sector cannot define itself by exclusion for too long, can it? At some stage very soon, once the novelty dies down, consumer relevance, beyond “different from TV”, will play a role in how the sector evolves. Currently, a lot of development for original digital content seems to be happening with an inward approach that makes sweeping assumptions about the consumer. Because after all, they are “people like us”.

Business model flaws can still be fixed. Cultural flaws can be tougher to fix. The rightful place content development deserves in the value chain must be given to it soon. The clock is ticking by, after all.