Off topic, but I find it extremely interesting that many Indian TV producers are actually putting up full HD episodes of their shows up on youtube directly (e.g., https://www.youtube.com/user/StarWorldIndia, which incidentally is a subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation). A far cry from just a few years back, when you couldn't even find them on public torrent trackers.
Does anyone know what the business plan here is (or is it just the fact that the overwhelming majority of the population have access to cable television and broadband speeds haven't caught up yet?)
Having lived in India for most of my life, I can say that you are correct about the business plan. Cable costs less than $10 at most places (less than $5 at some), therefore being easily accessible. By putting everything up on youtube, I think they earn some handsome ad revenue because of Indians abroad, a sizeable population, who otherwise would search for the shows online and end up watching them on sites where ads outnumber content and which more often than not are virus infected. End of the day it's a win win for everyone. Indians viewers abroad get to view the favorite shows via reliable means and the producers earn some youtube ad revenue which they otherwise would have never earned.
I'm speculating here, but maybe it has to do with the disposable nature of shows in India. Indian shows usually don't get sold as DVDs by the season. The same episode will often be re-run later the same day and into the next week until a new episode comes up.
The sheer number of episodes being churned out means extremely high competition and the more the exposure to the show, the more the interest in it.
I'm guessing this is just their way of locking in user interest so that they do tune in to the new episode that gets broadcast.
Also, the Youtube India ad revenue could be significant given the sheer number of eyeballs.
But the thing is, all the points you make are equally applicable even for US/European TV as well, and yet we have to put up with astonishingly shabby ways to watch them. Even the BBC has all these restrictions around their iplayer. Hulu was a good start, but the networks have consistently been messing with it and now it is... meh. I've just given up trying to watch them.
What makes this strategy work for Indian TV, but not for others?
The selling DVDs part may be it. If it's always freely available on Youtube to watch, why would anyone want to own DVDs?
Who knows?!
Edit: I just realized, India doesn't seem to have as much broadband internet penetration as the rest of the world. Where as it most definitely has a very high TV penetration.
Now, we see that in a lot of countries, USA for example, people are moving away from TVs solely to video streaming.
So I guess my earlier speculation of high viewership on Youtube might actually be completely wrong. It might be because the viewership on Youtube is low enough not to affect the main ratings.
Maybe they will face the same problems as the rest of the world once broadband becomes a bigger deal and a much larger percentage of people stop watching TV.
Why would anyone want to own DVDs? And CDs. That's how I felt for the last 5 years, looking at the boxes of various physical media collecting dust in my storage room. Thrown it away couple of months ago. Now looking at the books. It might take more time, maybe 10 years, before they are gone too.
Two reasons why shows are not sold in DVD in India
[1] Too many channels, too many programs, no-one is interested in watching old shows again.
[2] DVDs will be copied and sold in shops. I doubt even a small percentage of sale will even reach the original producers.
I think people remember these series for some days and then just forget.
If you have them on youtube, later people who missed them can go back and watch them. Besides its good advertising revenue too.
Time asynchronous media consumption is the way of the future. Besides who has the time these days to sit down and watch a particular episode on that precise day and time. Being able to watch it on demand is a lot better.
If you do happen to watch the sample episode, the main interview portion (2:00 on wards) is subtitled in English. The episode is about the caste system.
India is a subcontinent with several languages, ethnicities and social realities. To say any one TV Program in a particular language is favorite in India is not right. Each language has its own viewership and its own programs. National media is almost absent in India.
The show is broadcast in 7 languages - English, Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Bengali and Marathi. I would say this is the more 'national' than most of the other shows - the reach would be close to 80-90% of the population atleast.
Does anyone know what the business plan here is (or is it just the fact that the overwhelming majority of the population have access to cable television and broadband speeds haven't caught up yet?)