A Study: OTT Viewership in “Lockdown” and Viewer’s Dynamic Watching Experience

Abstract

Today we are going through a period of lock-down which the people of India have never seen before, for such a long time. In such a situation, in the era of this technology and the Internet, anyone likes to spend their free time in front of the digital screen, where they have many options to see. The ever-increasing viewership of the OTT video streaming services and the big star's inclination towards this platform justifies this. Today, the time we spent looking at our screens has increased immensely. As the cinema halls shut and film release has been suspended amid nationwide, this technological shift by internet has created a new kind of viewing experience and that might end up changing the collective movie watching experience in cinema hall which result in dent in the footfall whenever the screens open again.

This change in viewing experience created by OTT has a greatest fear for cinema hall owners. This thesis explore tries to analyse the impact of increasing OTT video streaming services viewership in lockdown to assess the future of collective watching experience in India. It frames the attitude of Indian people towards cinema hall through assessing different vantage points that mark shift in watching experience. At the end it gives them, recommendation contextualized the immensely increasing OTT viewership during lock down and its resultant effects on the collective watching experience.