The OTT platforms and web series are getting increasingly popular among the youth especially during the COVID -19 lockdown and also post pandemic too. Many research points out that the OTT platforms are a much more customized medium than television and the youth can more relate to the content of the new breed of web series. The recent breed of Indian web series is causing a paradigm shift from traditional television viewing among millennials. It’s a further shift of a traditional audience of a film from 70mm theatre screen and 40 inches television to ultimately in 6 inches mobile screen.
A web series is a series of scripted or non-scripted online videos, generally in episodic form, released on the Internet and part of the web television medium”. To put it simply, a web series is a series of video episodes that are released over time to tell a story, over the internet.
A survey conducted by Adamas University stated that.
Netflix is the most popular platform with 62.8% followed by Amazon Prime with 53.1% and Hotstar (51.3%). However, MX Player and Hoichoi are not far behind. Some not so popular names include TVF, Addatimes, Popcorn, Viu, Zee5, etc. Voot is being watched by 21% of the respondents.
The survey also found out that the comedy genre was preferred by 82% of the respondents whereas as many as 75% said they also like romance genre. The other popular genres which the audience desired are action, crime, and drama. A small portion of the audience said they should bring out more content based on sci-fi and horror stories. So, we also have viewership for and space for such content and it also provides a scope for profits. But, the comedy and romance genre dominates. So, while making web series, the producers can focus on diverse content to attract a larger audience.
Some of the most popular among the respondents are Sacred games, Byomkesh, Kota factory, Little things, Girl in the City, Mirzapur, Stories by Tagore, A Family man, Ghost stories, etc. So, we can say that the youth are not only consuming international content but also Indian content.
