First day first show at home!

Among a lot of things announced by Mukesh Ambani at the 42nd AGM of Reliance Industries, one particular announcement raises eyebrows! Here are the excerpts of the said announcement:

"Today, I am announcing that Jiofiber plans will come bundled with subscriptions to most leading premium OTT applications. Also, for the first time in India, we are introducing a disruptive concept for watching new movies.

Premium Jiofiber customers will be able to watch movies in their living rooms the same day these movies are released in theatres! We call this Jio first day first show.

The announcement, made a few days back, has raised eyebrows in various fields related to the film trade. Nobody seems sure of how to take this announcement.

The film industry and its process of taking entertainment content to the ultimate consumer - that is, the film viewer - is well worked out. It has evolved over the period as and when.

A lot of new avenues came along over a period to enjoy content, starting with the television, but the main outlet for films remained the cinema screen. The cinema screen cast a spell on the viewer.

In cities and towns, of course, there were cinema halls. But, in the mofussil India, where there were no pucca cinema houses, the screens travelled to them.

There was a concept of Touring Cinema in India where a cinema enclosure was set up in a huge tent or in the open space at a Taluka, which then attracted filmlovers from surrounding villages.

The open-air screenings could take place only after sunset but that helped, since by evening more people were free to watch a film. You may compare these to their elite version, the drive-in cinema.

With the advent of superior technologies in film production as well as exhibition, as well as the rising popularity of television, video format and mainly piracy, the single screen cinemas were forced to close down.

This also sounded the death knell for Touring Cinema. Filmmaking had become costlier and the way to recovery seemed to be only through multi-screen releases in multiplexes.