To celebrate the advent of video-on-demand (VoD), which has democratised the entertainment industry by allowing content creators to bring their stories to life, India’s Radio City network is launching Hitlist Web Awards.
The award, which will celebrate India's binge list, is a platform that recognises and felicitates the best work done by artists across the OTT space.
Being the biggest cinema market in the world, Indian OTT market is one of the most exciting business to watch out for. A 2019 KPMG report mentions that India will have more than 500 million online video subscribers by FY 2023, which will make the country the second biggest in the world after China. In fact, as per a CISCO report, video traffic is expected to account for about 82% of all internet usage by 2022.
The voting lines went live from February 14 and ends on March 8, where the audience will get an opportunity to vote for their favourite stars. The activity will culminate with a grand award night on March 19 in Mumbai.
The nominees will be shortlisted across 14 categories, like Best Series, Best Adaptation (From a book and International Series), Best Creator, Best Writing, Best Web Film, and much more. The winners will be decided by a grand jury, headed by Mayank Shekhar, editor, Mid-Day hitlist, an award-winning journalist, author, and broadcaster.
Shekhar said: “The OTT space has provided a platform to many individual content creators and creative mavericks to showcase their vision and talent and has gripped Indians with the plethora of shows available. We have witnessed experimentation by way of formats, genres, languages, and the subverting of conventionally popular tropes usually employed in mainstream cinema. According to an eMarketer report, the average Indian spent a little over two hrs daily watching videos.”
“The OTT boom has placed India on the global map with our work getting recognized internationally while allowing the Indian audiences to get a taste of diverse global content. I'm positive the Hitlist Web Awards will become one of our marquee properties in the coming years. It aims to felicitate the work done by the cast and crew of the shows and movies across multiple OTT platforms that we all have binged on”, added Rachna Kanwar, COO, Digital Media, Jagran Prakashan Limited.