Why is television still a part of millennials lives?

The television market is draining. With Netflix, Amazon Prime and Youtube legitimately changing the television and entertainment industry, I wonder why is television still a part of millennials lives?

Indian television is women-centric and mass centered, whereas young ones are either pirating or watching Netflix, YouTube or Amazon Prime. The rise of digital content platforms has changed television viewing in India.

According to the FICCI-KPMG Indian Media and Entertainment Industry Report 2017, the Indian film industry grew by a mere 3% in 2016 to reach Rs142.3 billion. Domestic theatricals and cable and satellite rights, the two major contributors to the industry’s revenues, along with the home video segment witnessed a negative growth with the former having reduced by around 4% in the last three years. While exact figures for 2017 aren’t available yet, industry experts said the dismal year should end in overall earnings at least 10-15% less than most years. On the other hand, the sale of digital video-on-demand (VoD) rights is the fastest growing segment in the overall movie industry revenue, expected to grow at a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 20-25%.

Apparently, it’s a trend that a show or a movie becomes a hit when it starts to spawn internet memes. With dozens of web series premiering on OTT platform, to name a few, Inside Edge staring Vivek Oberoi & Richa Chadda, Sarabhai Vs Sarabhai Take 2, Permanent Roommates, Girl in the city, etc. – what is special in the web series that makes them the next big thing on the internet?

With boring Saas-Bahu dramas and reality shows still ruling the television industry, the youth has chosen the internet as an option for alternate entertainment. The young audience in India has long complained about the lack of content on TV. Also, binge-watching has contributed a lot. With viewers choosing to watch multiple episodes at a time when the show is over, the objective is to always hold the viewer’s attention, need to give them something else – you can’t make them wait for a year for the next version of that series.

The study says, because of the digitalized lifestyle of the brain, humans have a shorter attention span, they lose concentration after eight seconds. Hence, the challenge is not the duration and number of episodes, the real challenge is having good content.

With the success of Amazon Prime’s first Indian Original series “Inside Edge’, it has announced multilingual medical thriller ‘Breathe’ – its second Indian Original series starting R. Madhavan and Amit Sadh. The question is, why this sudden change? How come senior actors are experimenting with web series roles? Seems like it’s a new trend where actors can advance their career by performing in Web series and short films.