By A Correspondent
The last decade-odd has seen the booming of news channels in India, and with the next general elections as also elections in key states not very far away, the focus on the news channels genre is set to grow. Given this, a BARC report titled ‘Breaking the News Story’ assumes importance as it dissects some interesting facets of the business.
While we recommend a close look at the full report (link: http://www.barcindia.co.in/resources/Breaking %20the%20News%20Story.pdf), here’s a summary of the report that we have culled from the pdf:
[] News is the third largest genre on television in terms of viewership, with 160+ channels across English, Hindi and Regional languages.
[] The News genre has witnessed an overall growth of 15% in the number of channels from previous year. English News channels have witnessed the maximum increase compared to Hindi and Regional News channels.
[] As compared to Total TV viewership, News Genre audience is skewed towards Males, age group of 22+ years and NCCS A & B.
[] News is a dynamic and event driven genre. Politically significant, scheduled events, such as State election results have consistently led to spikes in news viewership.
[] Some unforeseen events also lead to massive spikes in news viewership, due to high intensity and impact. For example- Demonetization, demise of Jayalalitha, Surgical Strike Operation.
[] The immediate effect of a big news story can be gauged by the corresponding rise in viewership. But, while more number of people tune in, the viewing trend by daypart remains similar to the general trend. i.e. Viewership peaks once in the morning and once in the night. A slight increase is also observed in the afternoon.
[] It appears that in the case of unscheduled events, viewers prefer quick takeaways and therefore consume short formats such as news bulletins, but in case of scheduled news events, viewers may also be interested in more detailed formats viz. Interviews/ studio discussions etc.
[] The breaking of a big news story impacts the genre composition on Television, as viewers start moving to news channels for updates. In case of demonetization, News genre gained 10% share of eyeballs and became the second most viewed genre on the day following the announcement.
[] News events also have varied impact on advertising. In some markets, the programming share on news channels increased on election result day, to keep viewers hooked. However, in one market, an increase in break duration was also observed. This may be a strategy of increasing ad inventory for advertisers to reach the high number of audiences that tune in.
[] In case of an economic event such as demonetization, Total ad FCT on news channels went down by 13%. However, some categories such as ATM, Anywhere Banking Services, and Online Shopping benefitted from the situation and increased their ad insertions to promote their services.