It’s raining news channels in the absence of TRP data

The latest to join the bandwagon is the Hindi business news channel from Times Network. The channel, ET Now Swadesh, was launched on October 4, and will compete with existing brands such as Zee Business Hindi and CNBC Awaaz. In August, the broadcaster launched Times Now Navbharat, a general news channel in HD. Again, it came with sharp journalism claims to surpass the noise in its relentless pursuit of fact-based reportage.

In September, the India Today group, which owns the popular Hindi news channel Aaj Tak, launched a channel with a “positive inclination” with the motto of Good News Today. “Good news, true news”.

The really interesting thing is that these new launches have come at a time when the genre does not have any viewership data. TV News Ratings was suspended in October 2020 when the alleged TRP manipulation scam came to light.

Still, broadcasters find it appropriate to expand their news offerings just before the festive season, when advertisers loosen their purse strings.

This move may be puzzling, but not entirely incomprehensible.

Broadcast Audience Research Council’s (BARC) annual ‘What India Watched’ report for India for 2020 states that since news viewership is driven by events, the year of the pandemic in 2019, jumped to 27% in 2020. It was not surprising to see. From 7% share pre-Covid, Shelly picked up 21% of the total TV viewership during peak COVID (week starting 21st March 2020). Although viewership declined after the launch of Unlock, news accounts for 10.4% of the total TV viewership for the year.

Furthermore, according to TAM AdEx data for January to June 2021, news genre advertising volumes were on par with general entertainment channels (GECs) at 28%.

Barun Das, CEO of TV9 Network, operated by Associated Broadcasting Company Pvt Ltd, said broadcasters are betting on news as the genre will continue to grow in healthy double digits for the next 10 years. Ltd. and owns six news channels in Hindi, Kannada, Telugu, Bengali, Gujarati and Marathi.

He said that the top three news channels in the market will make money. “Whether the next three earn money or not depends on the size of the market. So, the Hindi market may be large enough for six players, but there may not be a regional language segment.”

Yet, with the changing political climate in the country, India has seen its appetite for news grow. Much has been written about majoritarianism and political polarization, which is also feeding the audience of news channels.

In addition, news also reaches out to influencers- policy makers and top corporate leadership, making a case for brands to buy spots, said another TV industry veteran.

Above all, the stiff competition has kept the advertising rates of the news channel very low. “The news genre is good for creating reach and frequency. L.V., CEO of TAM Media Research, which tracks ad volume on TV. “Unless you buy a property like the Indian Premier League or Bigg Boss, the entertainment audience is very fragmented,” Krishnan explained. ” she added.

News content is also being monetized by broadcasters on digital platforms, thereby increasing subscription revenue in addition to advertising.

Still, due to a paucity of data, the genre may not benefit as much from festival advertising growth as it deserves. “This is a critical period for News TV as 30-35% of its annual turnover comes from these two and a half months. Unfortunately, advertisers have no option but to use legacy data and make estimates to implement the advertising budget,” said Das of TV9.

Krishnan, however, said that though not all advertisers have given up on news channels or cut spending on genre, the real disadvantage is BARC not being able to monetize its data.

He added, “Meanwhile, advertisers are relying on informal research, data from Tata Sky set-top boxes, Jio Platforms apps and even a technology firm like Zapr, which uses audio and audio data to trace media consumption behaviour. Content uses identity,” he said.

Suchi Bansal is the Media, Marketing and Advertising Editor of Mint. Simple post will look at pre-assing issues related to all three. Or just fun stuff.