Ekta Kapoor believes unscripted entertainment is emerging as one of the strongest formats to counter shrinking attention spans as social media increasingly competes with traditional entertainment for viewers’ time.
Speaking about her growing bet on reality programming, Kapoor said the biggest challenge facing the media and entertainment industry today is not competition from another television show or content format, but social media itself.
“People are so used to seeing reels and 10-second videos that to pull them into seeing long formats, you need to be shocking, provocative, interestingly real,” Kapoor said.
She added that long-form content also needs to continuously create the expectation that something unexpected could happen next.
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“The fight, I think, unscripted is winning currently,” she said, adding that her instinct is that the format is “here to stay.”
Kapoor’s comments come as entertainment companies rethink the construction of long-form programming for audiences increasingly conditioned by short-form video.
That shift is already changing the mechanics of reality television.
During the discussion, industry executives pointed out that discovery increasingly moves in a loop: audiences may first encounter a moment through a Reel, move to a promo and subsequently watch the full show. That has made pace and the opening minutes of a programme particularly important.
Content today needs something sufficiently “hooky” within the first 10-15 minutes to hold viewers, while 24×7 live streams have also created an additional layer of consumption around reality formats.
For Kapoor, unscripted also requires a fundamental change from the way scripted television is made.
In television fiction, she said, creators can plan episodes and character reactions well in advance. Reality programming removes that certainty.
“In television, I know my 10 episodes ahead. I know what’s going to happen, how this twist, who will react how,” she said.
In unscripted programming, creators can instead introduce a trigger without knowing exactly how a participant will respond.
“You have to play on your feet, which is new, fun and very interesting,” Kapoor said.
Kapoor has previously experimented with unscripted formats through Nach Baliye and later Lock Upp. She said working on reality programming showed her how different the creative process was from tightly controlled scripted storytelling.
She recalled being told during her Nach Baliye stint that “once you taste unscripted, it’s very tough to go back to scripted,” before eventually developing Lock Upp.
The producer is now also looking at the changing mix of formats as short-form and microdrama consumption grows.
However, Kapoor does not believe shorter formats will necessarily eat into audiences for long-form fiction or reality television.
“The appetite for content is increasing. And it’s no longer one size fits all. It’s going to be more like personal choices,” she said.
According to Kapoor, one viewer may prefer microdramas, another long-form fiction and another unscripted content.
“I don’t think there is going to be each one cannibalizing into each other, but each one finding their own community of audiences that continue watching and enjoying and consuming,” she said.
The implication is that the battle may be less about one format replacing another and more about how effectively each can adapt to audiences whose discovery habits are increasingly shaped by social platforms.
Long-form fiction, Kapoor said, will itself have to evolve for younger audiences.
At the same time, increasing overall consumption could allow viewers to move between multiple formats rather than make a binary choice between short and long content.
As reality television becomes faster, more interactive and increasingly integrated with short-form discovery and live feeds, Kapoor’s bet is that unpredictability could become one of long-form entertainment’s strongest weapons against the infinite scroll.
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First Published on October 1, 2026, 18:21:31 IST
