The sight of people protesting in muggy-weather Delhi has glued more people to the television sets in their drawing-room comforts. As the anti-corruption movement spearheaded by Anna Hazare brings thousands to the streets in the national capital and elsewhere in the country, mini-screens invited more eyeballs — courtesy rising curiosity to follow the rapidly-unfolding developments. The phenomenon, now a week old, has brought cheer to television news channels.
According to data with TAM, a television audience monitoring agency, the Hazare effect has enabled the viewership of Hindi as well as English news channels to nearly double in the week ending August 20, as compared to the previous week.
While the share of Hindi news channels increased by 87 per cent to 11.02 points upcountry, the all-India figure for their English counterparts combined was 0.54 points, as viewership shot up by 74 per cent. In the preceding four weeks, Hindi and English news channels had recorded an average genre share of 5.7 per cent and 0.33 per cent, respectively.
As interest levels among television viewers peaked in the course of the week, the average daily time spent by a viewer on a Hindi news channels also increased by 98 per cent — to 16.9 minutes between August 14 and 20. This is in contrast to the 8.28 minutes a viewer in the Hindi-speaking market spent on a news channel in the previous four weeks. For English news channels, the daily average time spent more than doubled to 0.72 minutes, as against the 0.30 minutes spent earlier on an all-India level.
TAM analysis of news content across 10 leading news channels in the week between August 14 and 20 further shows that reportage on the Jan Lok Pal Bill accounted for as much as 71.27 per cent share of the content aired on these channels.
Interestingly, for a cricket frenzy nation, the India-England Test series failed grab attention. While news related to the series in England contributed 3.25 per cent to news content, the Independence Day coverage pitched in a moderate 4.55 per cent share in news content.
The content analysis was carried across Aaj Tak, Headlines Today, CNN IBN, IBN 7, India TV, NDTV 24/7, NDTV India, STAR News, Times Now and Zee News. Among the English news channels, Times Now gained the most in terms of viewership, with its share growing by eight per cent — to 37.8 per cent from the 35 per cent registered in the previous week. The channel share increased marginally for CNN-IBN and Headlines Today.
