Telangana Chief Minister Revanth Reddy has been urged by a set of small producers to launch a government-backed OTT platform. Why should the government fund an entertainment platform? As per the producers, mainstream OTT platforms such as Netflix and Amazon Prime Video hardly stream small movies with a social message.
A London-based Telugu NRI represented the interests of such producers before the Telangana CM recently. The producer has been quoted as saying that small producers who make message-oriented movies with good intentions have never been respected by commerce-driven streaming platforms.
In the past, the Kerala government did finance an OTT platform on the grounds that films that promote social awareness need to be given a helping hand. No matter how much the governments back such platforms, they don't stand a chance before the established set of players, including Hotstar and Zee5. Any OTT platform needs to offer a steady stream of movies and invest crores of rupees on publicity to become popular. These are areas where state-funded OTT platforms can never hope to catch up.
