Hindi TV channels triumph over regional counterparts  

November 22, 2011

TAM’s 2010 study finding contrasts with growth of regional print industry

Moneylife Digital Team

According to television viewership survey agency TAM’s 2010 TV Consumption Behaviour Study, Hindi general entertainment channels (GEC) share has gone up, while regional GECs have taken a beating.

“Elderly women, housewives and kids with higher engagement time are showing more loyalty in terms of less switches or switches only within preferred genre(s). Chief-wage earners and youth are increasingly becoming more unpredictable by either watching less or switching across genres in an attempt to settle down on their content choice. This has proved beneficial for GECs, kids and big sports events or movies genre to grow while news, infotainment and music have come under some pressure,” said LV Krishnan, chief executive, TAM Media Research.

During 2009, Hindi channels comprised 42% of the total number of channels, and its share increased to 44% in 2010. Regional channels, on the other hand, observed a 2% drop to 34% from 36%. Hindi GECs were commanding 26.9% of viewers in 2009, but in 2010, it increased to 29.6%. In the Hindi speaking market, the share rose from 38.4% to 41.5%; while in the southern markets, Hindi GEC viewership increased to 4.7% from 4.4% the year before. Viewership of regional GECs, however, declined from 24.2% to 22.9%.

Overall, it is at odds with the print news readership trends, which have seen more regional players, emerge with increasing popularity. India Readership Survey shows that regional editions and magazines are becoming more popular, yet there seems to be no new entrants in news channels section.

There have been some 13 new entrants in the television world, with most of them belonging to the GEC, music or movies segment. Lifestyle had three new entrants.

However, the survey hints at increasing fragmentation. Apart from Tamil Nadu and Kerala, which have a most focused viewership of 13 channels, which account for 80% of viewership, all other states are witnessing fragmentation. However, over all, across India and the Hindi speaking market, viewership fragmentation remains unchanged.

“While expectedly with increasing number of channels (530+ in India, last count), the choice of content for the audience is also on increase but the much awaited hype of even more fragmented audience has not necessarily come true. This is because of two reasons: the analog distribution networks are running brim to capacity and hence are adding new channels only at the expense of old ones. So new channels are adding audiences only on the digital platforms, where we will see growing fragmentation. However, given analog’s 75% market share, fragmentation in decelerating. Secondly, market leaders in broadcasting with deep pockets are bringing high quality content. This has enabled them to skew audiences to few of the programs, bringing in higher returns. Thus we see two polarities in audience aggregation: few programs engaging large set of audiences on one side and a large set of programs engaging few audience on the other,” said Mr Krishnan.