Exclusive TAM data point to the rise of Tier-II general entertainment channels.
Forget the Indian Premier League, delete the Radia tapes. The Indian viewer may be interested in those, but what he watches more than half the time are soaps, reality shows and any other fare that a general entertainment channel (GEC) dishes out — in Hindi, Bengali, Tamil, Marathi or other languages.
So, networks with the best array of GECs dominate the market. Not surprisingly, these are the Star, Sun and Zee networks, each of which controls between 14 and 18 per cent of TV channels watched in India.
This, among other things, is what viewership data for the past three to five years, crunched by TAM Media Research exclusively for Business Standard, show.
“GECs are the ultimate aggregators in this market a la search engines,” says Harsh Rohatgi, head of content & communication, Imagine TV. That is because in a single TV-dominated market, a niche strategy can take you only so far.(Click for graph)
Also, as Star India COO Sanjay Gupta points out, the last 12-18 months have seen intense competition in the GEC space, across languages. Everyone has been busy launching channels in Hindi, Tamil, Kannada, Marathi, even Bhojpuri.
This helped GECs increase their share from under 50 per cent in 2008 to over 52 per cent of all TV viewing in India. Ad revenues have also moved largely in line, with GECs getting over half of the Rs 9,000-crore TV ad pie.
There are three takeouts from the TAM data, each with some interesting subtext:
First, within GECs, Hindi dominates. Of course, that is because the size of the Hindi audience is ten times any other language. But there are other reasons. The launch of Colors, Imagine and 9X acted like steroids on the Hindi GEC market in 2008 and 2009. Now, a third of all viewing time nationally goes to Hindi GECs, against about 22 per cent to non-Hindi ones.(Click for table)
Non-Hindi GECs, which were earlier gaining in share, actually lost out in the last couple of years. Much of this probably has to do with the language flavour that Hindi GECs like Colors and Zee now lend to their soaps. For instance, the biggest hit on Zee TV currently is Pavitra Rishta, which has a Maharashtrian flavour.
Second, while the weekly fight for top Hindi GEC continues, it is the battle between a growing breed of Tier-II GECs that both advertisers and investors are looking at with interest. These would be Imagine TV, Sab TV and Star One.
K Satyanarayana, vice-president & communication partner, Media Direction, says these can be used to increase the frequency of advertising at lower rates, while expensive flagship channels like Star Plus or Zee TV feel the impact.
Both viewership and ad numbers support this new breed of channels. Does this mean more GEC launches from broadcasters like Viacom or Turner, which do not have a flanking brand? Viacom18 Group COO Rajesh Kamat says his company sees no need for a second Hindi GEC after Colors. He adds: “If we had to put more money into GECs, a regional language GEC makes more sense. The way the market is fragmenting, as a network we cannot afford to not be in that space in the next three to five years.”
The third thing that stands out is the rise of Sab TV — the biggest gainer among Tier-II channels in the last year. Its share of Hindi-speaking viewership stands at almost 8 per cent, up from 3 per cent in 2008.
Anooj Kapoor, executive vice-president & business head of the channel, however, bristles at the categorisation. “Sab is delivering an average of 120-130 GRPs a week, in line with leading GECs. So, it is as mainstream (as Sony or Star Plus),” he says. He reckons what has worked for Sab is a shift from the usual kitchen politics shows on GECs to light-hearted family-oriented shows like Tarak Mehta ka Ooltah Chashmah.
He has a point. Sab TV may be an indication, albeit a small one, that the Hindi GEC viewer is ready for a change.
