MUMBAI: The latest All India Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) report studied the seasonal nature of television audience with respect to the viewership data over the past two years. BARC made an attempt to uncover some trends and insights that may be of value to the stakeholders for anticipating and formulating annual plans.
According to the report, TV viewing pattern remains consistent quarter on quarter, each year. Q2 (April-June) of the calendar year is traditionally the least performing quarter, as the viewership is seen to dip during this period. As the holiday season ends, viewership starts picking up in Q3 (July-September). The quarter witnessed a growth of five per cent in overall TV viewership from 2016 to 2017.
Q4 (October-December) is the strongest quarter of the year with respect to TV viewership. However, this quarter witnessed the least growth of 1 per cent in 2017 over the same quarter in 2016. A lot of special, festive programming occurs in this quarter in lieu of Diwali, Christmas, New Year, and hence viewership may be maxed out in this season.
The report also said that on a weekday, more viewership is garnered during a festival or a public holiday. Republic Day and Independence Day witness significantly high TV viewership, as viewers tune in to watch the live parade, President’s address, and other special programming such as patriotic movies that are aired to commemorate the occasion.
Students and the working population get an extra day off in the middle of their hectic week prefer to stay at home and relax, while on long weekends they step out and enjoy the extended holiday. Hence, mid-week holidays typically witness better TV viewership than those on a long weekend.
On the genre trends, the report mentioned that the GEC did not observe major fluctuations across the year. Award shows and finale episodes of popular reality shows are the reason for the hike in the GEC genre. The programming strategy or airing blockbuster movies and premiers or world premiers led to the growth of movie genre.
Also, a rise in viewership on movie channels is observed during Independence Day and T20 cricket tournaments. In addition to the movies genre, the kids genre too exhibits regular viewership spikes due to increased consumption of such channels on a weekend as opposed to a weekday.
The music genre's viewership share is similar to that of the kids genre among the 15+ audience. The genre seems to be growing with an upward linear trend. In the infotainment and youth genre, the latter is stable and consistent while the former exhibits a slightly downward trend line.
During telecast of big-ticket properties such as the T20 World Cup and the ICC Champions Trophy, the average viewership of the sports genre surpassed the highest average viewership for GEC genre on a given day during the two-year period.
