Has TV viewing really come down in India? is audience moving away??

Now a days lot of articles or news items have been floating around, and so are offline/online discussions happening that 'Television viewing in India has come down' or 'Audience is moving away from TV shows'. But has it really?? 😔Want to dwell upon, so started this topic which may interest many.

As I was coming across contradictory news items & discussions, thought to spend few minutes during my free time to read, understand and analyse as a common TV audience. So cross checked over last few weekends in my free time and found some interesting bits, that I'm sharing here. Shall keep adding data, info and posts. People reading, can also share their observations or relevant data, if any

First thing First: Understanding audiences

Television audiences are more settled and expect a daily dose of their appointment based content viewing, primarily woven around families, or relatable characters, drama, emotions, fun, bonding and conflicts. Its a group that usually sits together, and watches TV shows than solos. Whereas, OTT audiences are more evolved and expect more experimental and disruptive stories, characters and plots as these shows can be watched in solos from any device any time.

Households owning TV sets in India:

A news report published in 2021 says 210 mn Indian households own TV sets. 👍🏼

According to the TV Universe Estimates (UEs), TV Homes in India increased by 6.9% to 210 million from previous 197 million in 2018. TV viewing Individuals grew by 6.7%, effectively an increase of 56 million, since the last study was conducted two years back.

The report adds that the growth of ownership of TV sets in rural India took over urban India, with rural TV markets growing at 9% compared to 4% in the urban markets.

In absolute terms, "there is an increase in TV households of nearly 3.2 Mn in Urban India and 10.3 Mn in Rural India. TV households grew in all town classes of Urban markets with mega cities growing by 6%. Hindi speaking markets grew by 8%, highest in the country ” the study points out.

So if there is an increase in TV sets usage, then how can TV consumption in India come down?

TV industry is not going anywhere soon:

India’s TV industry earned about 720 billion INR in 2021 with subscriptions and advertising revenues put together. A large share of this came from subscriptions that amounted to over 400 billion INR during that year. Although the consumption of online content is on the rise in the country, television remains just as central in Indian households. In fact, the rate of penetration of paid cable and satellite television was forecast to amount to over 80% of households from 2019 to 2023. - by media source

But TV also lost huge pay TV subscribers in recent year:

Millions of pay TV subscribers give viewership traffic and monthly subscription revenues in India to channels to run their operations, thru distributors and operators. Take Zee as e.g. Zee group lost millions of subscribers in the last 1 year, hence their subscription revenues were down, same with some other hindi GECs too. Most Indian households still use cable/dish/dth as a means to get subscribe to their favorite bouquet of channels on TV, that too on a monthly renewal fee basis. On other hand many in small towns and rural areas seen to be preferring FTA services over Pay TV services.☺️

“Pay TV market has seen erosion of 4.6 million households which have moved to free-to- air (FTA) services. This is largely caused due to the pandemic, cost cutting done by families, also due to large working base migrating from urban regions to home towns, therefore the reason for the de-growth seen in subscription revenues. Good thing is we did not lose subscribers to OTT but because subscribers are migrating from pay to free tv." said Zee honco Punit Goenka during Feb 2022.

How are channels getting back, pay TV subscribers?

In Apr-May 2022 most GECs decided to come out of Free dish platform, now subscriber revenues and viewership base, for their paid channels is expected to improve.

E.g.

Starplus has free channel Star Utsav, Zeetv has Zee Anmol, Colors has Colors Rishtey that were part of FTA channels earlier. These channels were re-telecasting popular, successful, well received, variety of old serials of their respective pay TV channels, again on FTA. These old serials are still getting huge viewership and applause, due to which FTA subscribers did not feel the need to move to pay TV platform.

Now these channels also have been turned into paid channels with some nominal fee, and removed from Free dish, this has forced some households to turn from free to paid services to get their daily dose of fiction entertainment from GECs. Hence pay TV subscribers this year is expected to rise.

What's mostly TV audience watching?

Going out to a theater with family occasionally for watching a movie is for both outing and visual experience. But in television, it’s at least an hour and a half of family viewing everyday, and hence content selection is primarily a result of habit or consensus or suitability of time slot or just its dinner time pass.

The stakes are lower, and the idea of watching TV with the family is more important, than what is actually being watched. And it can also be news, sports, if that’s the general consensus in the house at that point of time.

Need to 'Bond' can be primary reason for TV watching in India as per recent Ormax survey report.

Often, the need to ‘Bond’ with the family while watching television is confused with watching family-oriented content, such as KBC or Anupama or Hum Saath-Saath Hain kind movies. While family-oriented content is a natural fit when a family of 4-6 people wants to bond over a TV viewing session, the idea of bonding over television is not content-driven per se, in the Indian context.

As per Ormax Bond, Unwind, Evolve, Indulge, Hope, Imagine, Learn - these are 7 needs for TV watching in general in India when they looked at Hindi GECs, movies, music and news channels genre, but 'bond' gets higher weightage from audience.

The control over the TV remote in India is now a shared family control, than an individual one. Content must work its way around this reality. And what cannot, must make way for what can.

Over the last year and a half, digital video consumption, both paid and free, has risen sharply in India, and many analysts have been quick to write the obituary of the television medium, which is not correct. As the need to ‘Bond’ is television’s unique calling card, and it will prove all such forecasts wrong.

TV viewership not going anywhere soon in India, as it isn't saturated yet.

Zeel MD, CEO Punit Goenka said recently that the subscription revenue continues to remain under pressure due to the pricing embargo. That said, there is headroom for growth in the pay-TV segment, he added. "I firmly believe that there is enough headroom for the growth of pay TV in the country. India still has about 90 million households who are yet to own their first TV sets, which represents a long runway for TV subscription revenues, unlike other global markets where TV penetration has saturated."