Bad content on TV has also fuelled OTT boom, says Rakesh Bedi

The viewership of OTT (over-the-top) platforms has been on the rise ever since COVID-19 entered our lives at the start of 2020 and led to the prolonged shutdown of cinema halls.

But veteran actor Rakesh Bedi believes that bad content on television is also an important reason for OTT shows doing well.

Asked about it in a recent conversation, he said, “Yes, 100%. And the same people who destroyed content on TV are now making web-series.”

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Pointing out that TV shows are so dismal despite so many being involved in their making, he said, “First you carry out research. Then your marketing team researches. In the creative team, there are eight or ten layers — top, middle, lower. Then there are so many designations. After so much research, how can your show fail and stop running in just three months?”

Bedi believes the craze for garnering TRPs, or television rating points, is at the root of the problem. This is why he believes yesteryear TV shows worked so well and continue to impress audiences even today.

“The simple reason is that [current television shows] run on TRPs," he said. "If there is no TRP, they kill off the father [in the story], push some person, set the daughter-in-law ablaze, etc. Whereas the content in the 1980s and 1990s was made with so much heart!”

Bedi said constant interference by television networks in the creative process isn’t helping either. “For example, in my shows like Shrimaan Shrimati, Yeh Jo Hai Zindagi and Yes Boss, which ran for eight or nine years, not once did someone from the channel instruct the director or writer what to do [in the plot]. Whatever we did, we did it from our heart.”

He added that in his show Bhabiji Ghar Par Hai, the channel concerned has never interfered in the creative process.

Bedi made his own web-series debut in 2019 with the second season of F.A.T.H.E.R.S on MX Player, which also starred Manoj Joshi and Virendra Saxena. He said he has a few more projects lined up, but they have been delayed by the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.