Good read! Could you please explore another niche category - Documentaries? Would love to read that. In India, the viewership share of Infotainment category on TV is very low (0-1%). This is quite natural, as in India and other emerging countries, where more than ~97% of households have only one TV, infotainment and lifestyle TV channels compete with GEC, News, and Sports for screen time. However, now millions of viewers who are interested in documentaries but usually miss the shows due to TV's appointment-based viewing experience can stream them. As the shelf life of most categories of documentaries is very long, we can even catch up on old Discovery and National Geographic shows that we have missed on TV.
Great point on documentaries. I covered that niche partially in this story about the rise of the true crime genre in India (read here: https://theimpression.thesignal.co/p/true-crime-patrol-netflix-discovery) which is turning out to be the hottest sub-genre in the documentaries category right now.
Wow, thanks, I'll check this out. I've never watched the true crime genre ever, but I think it's a great way for pure-play documentary OTT platforms to attract a large audience and later engage them with other traditional non-fiction categories. I'm curious if there's a large enough overlap between the true crime category audience, which is actually drama, and traditional non-fiction category (wildlife, travel, adventure, science, history, etc.) audience, which can be called infotainment.
great question and something to be dug into. so far, what I've understood is that the audience for 'infotainment' isn't big enough which explains the kind of pivot Discovery+ has also made into reality TV.
Understood. So the audience size for infotainment is similar to that of indie movies. Discovery India's originals are a mix bag with reality TV, true crime, and international formats like 'Into the Wild'. It's quite broad, which makes sense because they can focus more on whichever category works best. Just hope they don't turn into another drama platform.
Some of their acquired content is exceptional, especially Levison Wood's travel documentaries. I hope they stream his latest documentary, which was released in 2023.
Good read! Could you please explore another niche category - Documentaries? Would love to read that. In India, the viewership share of Infotainment category on TV is very low (0-1%). This is quite natural, as in India and other emerging countries, where more than ~97% of households have only one TV, infotainment and lifestyle TV channels compete with GEC, News, and Sports for screen time. However, now millions of viewers who are interested in documentaries but usually miss the shows due to TV's appointment-based viewing experience can stream them. As the shelf life of most categories of documentaries is very long, we can even catch up on old Discovery and National Geographic shows that we have missed on TV.
Thanks for reading Aadeesh!
Great point on documentaries. I covered that niche partially in this story about the rise of the true crime genre in India (read here: https://theimpression.thesignal.co/p/true-crime-patrol-netflix-discovery) which is turning out to be the hottest sub-genre in the documentaries category right now.
Wow, thanks, I'll check this out. I've never watched the true crime genre ever, but I think it's a great way for pure-play documentary OTT platforms to attract a large audience and later engage them with other traditional non-fiction categories. I'm curious if there's a large enough overlap between the true crime category audience, which is actually drama, and traditional non-fiction category (wildlife, travel, adventure, science, history, etc.) audience, which can be called infotainment.
great question and something to be dug into. so far, what I've understood is that the audience for 'infotainment' isn't big enough which explains the kind of pivot Discovery+ has also made into reality TV.
Understood. So the audience size for infotainment is similar to that of indie movies. Discovery India's originals are a mix bag with reality TV, true crime, and international formats like 'Into the Wild'. It's quite broad, which makes sense because they can focus more on whichever category works best. Just hope they don't turn into another drama platform.
Some of their acquired content is exceptional, especially Levison Wood's travel documentaries. I hope they stream his latest documentary, which was released in 2023.
Keep up the good writing!