As we know it has been more than 12 months of Covid-19 pandemic all around the world, it has brought a huge change in the media & entertainment industry. Before pandemic happened, we all used to go to cinema halls for movie premieres. But now due to lockdowns and quarantines, the cinema halls have faced huge loss due to complete shut down in their operations. Star Cineplex, the first ever multiplex in Bangladesh, were noticed for eviction from the Bashundhara City during the mid-2020’s. However, they retained their position there but the loss they incurred was inevitable.
Since the cinema halls were closed, many online streaming services rose to the occasion. Online streaming platforms like Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, YouTube, Disney+ have registered a 10% growth in their viewership worldwide during the lockdown. Netflix has registered an increase of more than 50 percent in the number of first-time installations of its mobile application in Italy and more than 30 percent of that in Spain.
Besides, the online streaming platforms are advertising social awareness by advising people to stay at home and stream movies. Other streaming platforms also have an increased number of viewers in this current period. Twitch experienced an increase of 31% in its viewership as more individuals connected with the live streaming platform.
Bangladeshi popular streaming platforms such as, Bioscope by Grameenphone, Robi TV+ by Robi, Banglaflix by Banglalink also took this opportunity to heavily invest in their marketing strategies releasing a part of their contents free of cost for the viewers. This increased their viewership and people are shifting more towards online streaming services rather than depending on local cable TV channels for Bangla short films and movies.
However, these local streaming services are not getting enough revenues for their paid contents like international streaming services like Netflix, Amazon Prime Videos etc. during the pandemic. This is due to the better-quality content delivery of the international streaming services. Bangladeshi people are yet to embrace the concept of paying for content in the local streaming services, although they are paying in dollars for Netflix reported by the Head of content of Bongo BD.