Lets not get OTT over cinemas

Whats this hoohaa hauva in Hindi over OTT Firstly since you must know OTT stands for Over The Top India is the only country that uses such an STDlike term for Netflix and chillThe acronym comes from telecom industry that notified all services over and above what already comes with a mobile phone as OTT To quote my friend the media maven Sameer Nair Telecom and broadband players laid the cables and created infrastructure for the Internet What got built over it is OTTTechnically WhatsApp Pornhub Facebook TikTok etc are all OTTs But we save that word essentially for subscriberbased videostreaming platforms DisneyHotstar Amazon Prime Video Zee5 and the like What are these really If you ask me Video Cassette Players VCPs of the 80s mdash with a virtual videorental library running replenishing roundtheclock Its not a surprise that the first mover in this medium was Netflix a DVDvideo rental libraryThe only difference is that apart from television the chosen filmsshows on an OTT can also play on your laptop tablet or cellphone The latter is where I watch practically everything now Primarily because it perfectly meets the best projection standards for visual entertainment referred to me by filmmaker Shyam Benegal 85The eyes should be at a distance of two and half times the diagonal of the screen thats usually the last third in the seating plan of a cinema audi mdash balcony seats of singlescreen theatres from back in the day Besides no background score and dialogue sounded sharper and clearer than from a headphone making love to your mobile phoneQuite a few months before the world shut down for corona I asked the PVR founder Ajay Bijli pioneerbaap of Indias multiplex industry if his business was in anyway getting affected by Netflix and chelas He flatly said noNetflix and the lot he said held an advantage over webseries or longform entertainment mdash rather than yanking bums off seats for movies Indian multiplex chains enjoyed the added benefit of operating in a domestic market with 1500 films in multiple languages besides EnglishHollywood to juggle between in a year depending on geographyYou could pack multiplexes in Chennai and Chandni Chowk with altogether separate content mdash something you couldnt quite do the same way in China US or Saudi Arabia where PVR chose not to enter despite Arabs opening the marketBut thats the bone that relatively offbeatindependentnonevent filmmakers have forever had to pick with multiplexes That despite audis of varied sizes for all kinds of audiences they would humiliate the indies even nonblastfest Hollywood with terrible showtimings if okay with allowing a screening at all Further they would penalise audiences for trying out something novel by charging them the same ticketprice as for a movie with thousand times its budget No Masaan will never equal MarvelSo should one hate on multiplex chains Only if you consider them to be part of content business mdash only cast and crew of a film are Multiplexes are in realestate business mdash paying forward rent to malls Theyre also in the hospitality plus food and beverage FampB business although Bijli told me FampB with surely a 2000 per cent markup accounts for only 30 per cent of PVRs revenuesWhat does that make a multiplex A luxury product Whatever happened to movies as mass entertainment Multiplexes cornered the rich posh Satellite television early 2000 onwards mdash insanely bidding for premiering blockbusters only a few weeks postrelease mdash made the daily realestate cost of running massive singlescreen multiclass halls packing in audiences week after week with both cheap and highpriced tickets economically unsustainableHotstarAmazonNetflix is only the new Indian satellite TV channel Except with massive global reach and I havent even mentioned Jio yet Salman Khan strikes the same multicrore multipleyear deals with Amazon the way he did with Star TV less than a decade agoCould movies go totally online as did music mdash replacing CDstapes No since those CD guys were in the plastic business adding nothing new to music content How do you find an urban replacement to moviedates the real Netflix and chill or outdoor rituals for generations classified as weekendfestivalcouplefamilyschoolcollegemassbunkpostexampreexam or just singles nightouts collectively laughing crying exclaiming hissing dissing mdash left to oneself in a dark hall yet surrounded by light and sound and warmth of crowdsI suspect a reason Bijlis multiplex chain was doing fab business right before COVID19 is because of and not in spite of the Indian economy tanking even then Theatrical entertainment as leisureluxury tends to do better during recession even depression given limited purchasing power for more expensive options highend restaurants travel etcWhy am I stating the semiobvious Because in times of corona two major Bollywood movies starring Alisters Amitabh Bachchan Ayushmann Khurana Vidya Balan decided to drop straight to OTT instilling sharp fear that the very survival of theatres was at stakeWell that could be If nobody shows up at public places altogether because a superspreading virus remains untamed potentially lurking around the corner with no cure in sight In which case scratch all of the above Who cares about entertainment if our existence looks bleakMayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture He tweets mayankw14 Send your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individuals and dont represent those of the paperCatch up on all the latest Mumbai news crime news current affairs and a complete guide from food to things to do and events across Mumbai Also download the new midday Android and iOS apps to get latest updates MidDay is now on Telegram Click here to join our channel middayinfomedialtd and stay updated with the latest news