In the sixth edition of BARC-Nielsen’s report on ‘Crisis Consumption on TV and Smartphones’ from 18 to 24 April, OTT sector and homegrown streaming services continue to see a rise in content consumption.
Video streaming on smartphones increased by 27 per cent in metros among premium audiences during the period. The extension of the lockdown has seen very strong growth across all segments of OTTs. Movies and Original series continue their magnificent growth on OTT platforms at +42 per cent increase in users/week and +115 per cent increase in users/week respectively.
The time spent/user/week has spiked by 82 per cent for movies and 57 per cent for original series on smartphones. The report took into consideration Amazon Prime Video, Disney+Hotstar, MX Player, Netflix, VOOT and ZEE5.
To gain more eyeballs, ZEE TV broadcasted ALTBalaji-ZEE5’s original shows like Baarish, Karle Tu Bhi Mohabbat and Kehne Ko Humsafar Hai. Star Plus too aired Hotstar Specials, Hostages to fill in the lack of fresh content as productions are temporarily stopped due to COVID.
In the first-of-its-kind of survey, BARC revealed contrary numbers. Web originals have not worked well among HSM Urban audiences, and all shows have seen a drop in viewership compared to its immediate previous week as well as the pre-COVID period. Whereas they performed quite well among premium audiences.
Strong gains for Movies and Original Series on OTT services continue. Angrezi Medium topped the movie list in order of gross consumption, mostly owing to Irrfan Khan’s sudden demise. Disney+Hotstar clearly reigned in this field with almost all desired movies streaming on the platform in order of gross consumption and percentage of unique users who watched the content.
With the further extension of lockdown till 17 May 2020, these numbers are only going to rise.
