Warner Bros Discovery aims to balance TV and OTT businesses

The lifestyle and factual entertainment vertical of Warner Bros. Discovery is looking to balance its linear television and video streaming (over-the-top, or OTT) businesses, a senior executive said, even though the target audience has largely moved to OTT despite the shows being aired on television.

Linear television continues to be the company’s mainstay, where it sees robust viewership and ad sales in India, Sai Abishek, head of factual and lifestyle cluster, South Asia, Warner Bros. Discovery, said in an interview. “We plan to strengthen that part of our brand portfolio with fresh programming, both globally and locally,” he said. “At the same time, we’re looking at producing meaningful content for our OTT business with discovery+.”

On the OTT side, the company has seen traction this year for true crime and historical shows, Abishek said, and will continue to build on bundled partnerships in India’s cluttered OTT video market. The firm’s video streaming platform, discovery+, is already available on aggregator apps like Prime Video Channels in India, and other deals are also in the offing.

Warner Bros. Discovery is planning a global rollout of its streaming service Max next year, Abishek said, but discovery+ will continue to supplement the business in markets where Max will not operate, such as India. “There are no plans for Max in India since we’ve already licensed all our programming to Jio, which is a meaningful partnership to the network, as of now. Those plans could be revisited when the Max discussion picks up,” Abishek said.

Going forward, the network, which premieres shows across its television and streaming platforms to take advantage of all monetization opportunities, will premiere some titles on OTT first. However, it is important to have shows dropping on TV, too, Abishek said, to support the ad sales and distribution business. In 2023, the company launched titles such as Hunt for the Indian Mujahideen Love Kills: Madhumita Shukla HatyakandStar Vs Food Survival and History Hunter. While the slate for 2024 is still tentative, Abishek said the company will definitely produce more content globally.

To be sure, challenges for India’s OTT ecosystem are many. While the market is cluttered with multiple players, paid subscriptions have hit a plateau in the top metros, and advertising is yet to take off.

“In our category (factual entertainment), there are only a handful of players operating. Because viewer tastes have evolved so much, high-calibre programming is the norm now. Plus, a lot of people in smaller towns have still not sampled OTT content, so there is room for growth,” Abishek said while emphasizing that the company will remain focused on subscriptions as far as its OTT business goes.

He added that it hasn’t been easy for the industry to maintain its commercials on the infotainment genre, particularly with changes taking place at companies like Walt Disney, Viacom and others. “Over the next two years, we shall be able to see a different trajectory for the infotainment genre,” he said. LiveMint