Soaps in a soup: Once-famous Indian soap operas are losing to the OTT onslaught

Ten years ago, Yeh Rishta Kya Kehlata Hai used to garner TRPs of 9-10. Now, it’s a big [achievement] even if you touch 2-3,” says Hindi and Marathi TV serial producer Rajan Shahi, who is known for the show that has been airing on Star Plus since 2009, as well as hits like Anupamaa (Hindi, 2020) and Aai Kuthe Kay Karte (Marathi, 2019).

His contemporary, Saurabh Tewari, writer and producer of Hindi shows like Sherdil Shergill on Colors TV and Lakhan Leela Bhargav (LLB) on JioCinema, points out that Anupamaa used to get urban TRP, or target rating points, of 4+ in 2020 when it was launched. “Now, it is at 2.8 even though it continues to be the top show. The volume of consumption (on TV) has come down.” TRP is a metric used by marketing and advertising agencies to evaluate viewership.

At their peak, before the binge-watching era, primetime TV serials had audiences in a spell for years on end, even if the plot barely moved. But OTT (over the top) content and its convenience of non-linear viewing, digital short videos, and social media are pulling audience attention in different directions. And the ratings of TV serials—the backbone of general entertainment channels (GECs)—are plunging. Some producers, at least in the regional language space, are already talking of a big shift in ad spend towards OTT and social media. And the dip in TRPs has forced producers to tweak their format to appeal to audiences across platforms in what is being dubbed the ‘TV+’ model.

Things are especially bleak for the Hindi TV serial industry—the largest among Indian languages—as the success rate and shelf lives of shows are shrinking. Eight years ago, 80 per cent of shows used to complete a year, say producers. Several, like Kumkum Bhagya and Pavitra Rishta, ran for over 1,000 episodes, while Yeh Rishta Kya Kehlata Hai has been on air for more than 10 years now, minting money for both the producer and TV network. “Now 60-70 per cent of Hindi shows don’t make it past the one-year mark, and many get shut down in four to five months,” says Shahi, Founder of Director’s Kut Productions.

That sucks out the business’s profitability, as shows are planned with 260 episodes a year. In that format, shows take about 100 episodes to break even and start making money around the 160-mark. “But if my show runs only for 160 episodes, I don’t make any money. If it shuts in 80 episodes, I lose money,” adds Tewari. Shahi says he spends a lot of time explaining to actors, directors, and technicians that budgets are not going up even if the show is successful. In fact, per-episode budgets have declined 25-30 per cent over the past year across both languages, says Shahi.

Southern Accent

In the South, where India’s second- and third-most thriving TV soap industries of Tamil and Telugu are housed, the scenario is slightly different. Shows continue to garner double-digit primetime TRPs. “The southern markets (Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, Karnataka, and Kerala) have a higher TV penetration of around 95 per cent compared to states such as Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh, where it is only about 42 per cent,” says media and entertainment industry expert Rajib Basu, who is Partner at professional services firm PwC. Besides, he adds, channels such as Star Plus, Colors and Zee TV have a higher share in the urban areas of Hindi-speaking markets, while the rural space has a higher penetration of free-to-air channels like Dangal, Star Utsav and Goldmines.

Plus, southern audiences simply love to watch more television. Prime time in the south is between 6 pm and 11 pm, while it starts at 7.30 pm in the Hindi belt and ends at 11 pm, says Jai Lala CEO of Zenith, the media buying agency under French ad major Publicis Groupe. “The loss of viewership time is happening in regional markets as well, but the pace is much slower [than] Hindi.”

Just ask S. Ramamurthy, whose Vision Time India has been a leading producer of south Indian serials for over two decades. One of his shows, Kayal (2021) on Sun TV, has been the top-rated show in Tamil with a TRP of 11-12 on primetime since it began airing. In contrast, his show Thangam, which aired between 2009 and 2013, maintained a TRP of 33. “Earlier, afternoon serials used to manage a TRP of 11-12. Now, primetime serials garner only 11-12, while afternoon shows get 5,” he says. “Shows used to easily run for 8-10 years earlier. These days, a good show lasts 500 episodes (two years).”

Leading Telugu serial producer Shobu Yarlagadda, famous for producing the Baahubali films, paints a similar picture. “The Telugu audience for serials is still intact compared to Hindi, but compared to Telugu’s viewership a few years ago, it has reduced,” says the Co-Founder and CEO of Arka Media Works.

Budget Control

It’s not that regional markets are insulated from the OTT onslaught, but Shahi, Ramamurthy and Yarlagadda are unanimous that tighter budgets give them a longer runway. All of them agree that serials get Rs 2-3 lakh to shoot an episode in Marathi, Tamil and Telugu. In Hindi, however, the budgets are Rs 7-10 lakh an episode, going up to Rs 20-30 lakh even 10 years ago. “We never had and still don’t have those kinds of budgets. So, the OTT impact on Hindi serials is much more than...[on] regional languages,” says Yarlagadda.

The broadcasting machinery functions on advertiser revenue. A 30-minute episode has 22 to 24 minutes of content and six to eight minutes of ads. Despite the higher TRPs of regional channels, Hindi channels command much higher ad rates. “A 10-second ad on a leading channel in a top Hindi show with a TRP of 2–3 may get Rs 1.5 lakh, while a regional show with 10-12 TRP will get only Rs 30,000–40,000 simply because Hindi caters to a larger viewership base,” says Zenith’s Lala. Hindi is still the largest TV market, points out PwC’s Basu. “The language covers 70 per cent of the addressable market. It is about 2.31 times the size of all the southern markets.” But three to four top Hindi channels compete for ad money compared to regional languages, where one or two occupy the top slot.

Disney Star, Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd, Viacom18 and Sun TV Network did not respond to Business Today’s queries.

“It’s more profitable for a regional channel to run a serial because their cost of production is less and the market is very specific. So, their ratings and ad revenues are also specific for a market,” says Tony D’Silva, Managing Partner, Business Consulting at Azendor Consulting. The former Group CEO of Sun TV Network and former Star TV executive adds that a Hindi GEC channel is spread all across. “Naturally, their costs are much more in terms of delivery mechanisms and everything.”

Going Hybrid

All leading broadcasters have their own OTT apps today, and many TV serials have sizeable viewership on digital platforms. Meanwhile, the national TV landscape is undergoing sweeping changes. American giant Walt Disney is reportedly on the lookout to hive off its India business Disney Star. Viacom18, which owns the Colors network of channels, has adopted a more digital-first strategy centred around aggressively scaling up its JioCinema OTT app. Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd and Sony Pictures Networks India are in the midst of a proposed merger.

Shows are already facing the pinch as advertisers are taking their money to digital platforms. Vision Time’s Ramamurthy says 40 per cent of TV’s ad revenue has migrated to OTT players, YouTube and other social media. “That’s where the younger crowd is. In the future, TV ad spends will come down further. It may last for five years. But after that, the TV model may have to change.” Zenith’s Lala confirms a huge shift in ad spends, with TV ad spends growing in single digits when digital is witnessing 20-30 per cent growth. “Even in absolute numbers, TV and digital ad spends are almost equal. By 2024, digital will overtake TV in ad spends.” Basu says TV viewership is bound to be challenged by OTT as user penetration for OTT video in India is expected to increase from 30 per cent to 36 per cent between 2023 and 2027.

Now, seasoned producers, too, are flocking to web content. In Hindi, producers point to ‘TV+’ content such as Gullak (SonyLIV), which are 25-50-100-episode shows made on a budget of Rs 30-50 lakh an episode for OTT platforms. They are the middle ground between a typical TV serial and expensive web originals like Farzi or Family Man that are shot on budgets of Rs 3–3.5 crore per episode (excluding actor fee). Tewari says it is better to go in for these short-format shows rather than sign up for a 260-episode serial and risk losing money if it shuts down within 100 episodes. “Besides, the volume of business is the same whether you do 20 episodes on a budget of Rs 35 lakh per episode or 100 episodes on a budget of Rs 7 lakh per episode.”

Ramamurthy says his firm is working on eight TV serials now, compared to 14 a decade ago. Yarlagadda’s firm is focussing more on web shows, with four to five in various stages of development, while its serial count has dipped. “Serials barely turn in profits. For us, it just breaks even and meets certain parts of our office expenses.”

But OTT platforms haven’t cracked the profitability code just yet. Producers say it takes years for a show to get mooted on a top OTT platform. Shahi says the visibility of failure is higher on TV. “In digital, you make entire seasons. You find out only when the show doesn’t get renewed for a second season that the first one did not work, maybe.” Even as the TV versus OTT content debate rages on, producers say primetime TV serials are a diminishing phenomenon. Yarlagadda sees them making way for more non-fiction programming such as reality-, talk-, and game shows. “But the peak of the TV era is behind us.”

@SaysVidya