Page 39 - IMDR JOURNAL- 2022

“Over The Top” (OTT) platform - A blessing or a Curse?

Author:
Dr. Milind Peshave 1
Principal, Dr. D. Y. Patil IHMCT, Pune
peshave.m@gmail.com

Dr. Jyoti Peshave 2
Associate Professor, Bharati Vidyapeth IHMCT, Pune
jyoti.peshave@gmail.com

ABSTRACT-

The Indian television and entertainment industry is going through a paradigm change with the introduction
of the “Over The Top” platform. This platform allows the viewers the flexibility of watching television and
giving them ample of options to choose from. It is indeed a great breakthrough for the industry and this
platform gained a lot of popularity amongst the viewers particularly the younger generations. The biggest
characteristics of this platform are that the contents displayed are not subjected through any regulations or
censorship as is commonly known as. Therefore the production houses and creative people have complete
liberty to express their views and thoughts completely unfiltered. However, in the recent past, it has been
observed that this platform has created some adverse effects on the viewers and the society at large. In view
of this situation, it’s time to introspect on the issue. This study aims at understanding the perception of the
viewers of various age groups on the topic and to recommend some modifications in the OTT entertainment
model.
Key Words: “OTT”, “Over the Top”, “Television”, “Entertainment”

I. INTRODUCTION

Over The Top platform, commonly known as OTT have been gaining a lot of popularity in the last few years.
The introduction of OTT brought a revolution in the Indian Television and entertainment industry. The
breakout of Covid-19 pandemic and the subsequent lockdown exposed a lot of viewers to this platform. A lot
of viewers of the satellite television shifted to OTT platform due to the convenience and flexibility of
watching that it offers. Moreover, taking this opportunity the OTT operators launched aggressive
promotional campaigns to attract subscriptions. As a result of which, there was a great increase in
viewership of OTT. This platform also proved to be the only option for release of new movies amidst closure
of movie theaters in the lockdown giving a booster to this industry. The youth and millennials were the major
target viewers of OTT. It has been observed in the recent past that OTT platform acted as a savior during the
lockdown due to availability of unlimited entrainment options to the viewers clubbed with a lot of varied
contents to match the likings of all age groups. The biggest characteristics of the platform is its uncensored
an unfiltered content. However, over a period of time, due to these characteristics, the platform is flooded
with a lot of contents displaying vulgarity, sexuality and violence. Although these contents became very
popular, a lot of them are not appropriate for watching with family and thus watching them privately either in
private time or on the smartphones became the norm. In view of this, the viewers started spending a lot of

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