Zee and Sony split up. Now, streaming studios are sulking
Zee Entertainment Enterprises, ending India’s largest entertainment deal, after months of fruitless talks to appoint a chief executive officer for the merged entity. The person cited above said Amazon Prime Video takes long to approve projects, and has cancelled some of the 40 titles it had announced in April 2022. “Disney, too, has been trying to cut losses, and buying and commissioning has been moving at a glacial pace there," the person added.
A second content studio head agreed while there is more movement on Sony’s side on streaming projects, there is less clarity for producers from ZEE5. “We had made submissions a few months ago that were liked but haven’t been activated since. Overall, activity in the OTT industry is down by half compared to two years ago, and big commissioning decisions (especially for fiction shows) aren’t being taken as much.
The AVoD category, too, is exploratory and volume of green-lighting is limited at the moment," the person added. AVoD stands for advertising video on demand, or the ad-led model. The big difference is that the Indian OTT industry is now a buyers’ market, Anuj Gandhi, a media analyst and founder of media tech startup Plug and Play Entertainment, said.
“The Zee-Sony combination could have made a difference (to content commissioning). But there is a dearth of buyers now and nobody is chasing content at any price asked for," Gandhi explained. To be sure, industry experts say it isn’t entirely surprising that after an initial rush of bullish spending when they looked to consolidate their presence in India, video streaming platforms are slowing investments amid muted subscriber additions.
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