MUMBAI: Television viewers in the South Indian states of Andhra Pradesh/Telangana, Tamil Nadu/Puducherry, Karnataka and Kerala begin their TV viewing earlier than the Hindi-speaking markets (HSM). They also wind up earlier than the HSM, according to a BARC India research report.
The South has higher viewership than the HSM only during early morning hours between 5 and 8 am. After that, the viewership of HSM is consistently higher throughout the day.
Source : BARC
The gap between HSM and South reduces marginally during 6–9 pm, according to the report.
South India also has a marginally higher reach during morning hours (5–8 am) while the HSM has a higher reach later all day throughout. This, it said, could be due to the fact that the HSM has a higher number of TV homes than the Southern states.
Source : BARC
In terms of genre-wise share of viewership, South India, as opposed to the notion of being a big consumer of movies, has a lower share of movies than GEC. On the other hand, their share of GEC and news channels is higher than the HSM. Within these regions, the relative ranking for most genres remains constant across HSM and the South.
However, it needs to be kept in mind that this would be influenced by the number of channels falling under each channel genre, BARC cautioned.
Genre popularity
Serials and film-based programmes are the most popular programme themes across HSM and the South, but film-based programming has a higher share in the South than in the HSM.
News/business, game/talk/quiz and miscellaneous programming has higher share in the South, while serials, sports and music have higher share in the HSM.
Source : BARC
Barring Kerala, all the other Southern states have a bigger preference for film-based programmes than serials. Serials as a programming theme rule the roost in Kerala. After film-based programmes, serials are the second-most popular programming theme.
Andhra Pradesh/Telangana, followed by Tamil Nadu/Puducherry, has a higher viewership share of news content compared to Karnataka and Kerala. AP/Telangana is the only state to have double-digit viewership for news.
Viewership for sports content is almost even, with Karnataka having a slight edge over others.
Game/talk/quiz content has greater demand in Andhra Pradesh/Telangana and Kerala.
Miscellaneous content has more popularity in Karnataka and Kerala. Content based on nature/tourism and music is least popular genres in the South.
ATS vs OTS
The relative performance of programme themes remains similar across the four states. Serials have the highest score in terms of ATS for all the four states. In terms of OTS, it is second only to film-based content, except in Kerala where it has the maximum OTS as well.
Despite enjoying the highest OTS, film-based content has lower ATS than serials. On the other end of the spectrum is content based on game/talk show/quiz, which has a high ATS but is among the lowest when it comes to OTS.
Source : BARC
Miscellaneous and news/businesses-based content has a mediocre score on both ATS and OTS. The worst-performing content themes in terms of both ATS and OTS are music, nature/tourism and lifestyle. Tamil Nadu and AP share more similarities in OTS and ATS, while Karnataka and Kerala are more similar to each other.
Advertising categories
Food and beverages (F&B) is the most-viewed advertised category in the Southern market, majorly driven by Kerala. The next big category is personal care/hygiene, which is driven by Karnataka.
The least popular categories overall are cosmetics, office automation – appointments. While the relative ranking of categories remains constant across all markets, some categories are more or less popular in certain markets.
For example, while F&B is the biggest category in the AP/Telangana market, it is not as popular as in the other markets. Conversely, the miscellaneous category (events, political ads, stationery, music albums, announcements, film trailers, etc.) has a higher popularity in AP/Telangana.
Source : BARC
Personal care/hygiene and hair care are more viewed in Karnataka than in other southern states. This could be further validated with reference to impressions generated by programme themes such as lifestyle-based content.
This indicates that among Southern states Karnataka is skewed towards affluent content and fashion.
Similarly, building, industrial and land materials/equipment and personal accessories categories are more popular in Kerala.
Urban vs rural
Viewership in urban and rural areas is comparable throughout the day, with both seeing a peak during the primetime hours. However, as opposed to the rest of the day, during primetime hours it is mainly the rural markets that seem to be driving the viewership and not urban markets.
Rural markets have similar viewership trends across states, which is not the same in urban markets.
In urban markets, the viewership among markets differs between primetime hours and non-primetime hours. During non-primetime hours, AP/Telangana has maximum viewership. After AP/Telangana, maximum viewership alternates between TN/Pondicherry and Karnataka, with Kerala having the lowest viewership for most day parts.
Source : BARC
However, during primetime hours, this order is completely changed. Urban Karnataka has the maximum viewership after 9 pm and this continues into the late-night hours as well.
Karnataka displays similar behaviour among the rural markets with respect to primetime viewership. During late-night hours, Kerala, which is a relatively smaller market, sees the highest viewership. Conversely, TN/Pondicherry, which is one of the bigger markets during non-primetime hours, shows the least viewership during primetime hours in both rural and urban markets.
On an overall level, in most time bands, the South rural market marginally edges out South urban. Rural as well as urban south market reach is driven by AP/Telangana.
The difference is much starker from 6 pm onwards. During primetime (6–10 pm), the South rural market has a significantly higher reach than the South urban market. Conversely, after 10 pm the reach of the South urban market is higher than South rural.
Reach among the southern states differs as the day progresses. AP/Telangana reports the highest reach throughout the day within rural and urban markets (except during late-night bands). Kerala reports the lowest reach for both urban and rural except for late-night bands in the rural market.
In terms of ATS, South urban and South rural markets are almost on a par with each other. Urban has a very marginal edge over rural in some time bands. The South rural market is driven by Kerala during primetime hours.
The South rural market reports a higher ATS during primetime hours (7.30–8.30) than the South urban market does. However, during 5.30–6.30 pm the South rural market witnesses a dip in its time spent as compared to South urban market.
Hindi-dubbed content on Southern channels
GECs from all Southern states except Kannada GECs air Hindi-dubbed content. Popular shows from leading channels like Star Plus (‘Diya Aur Baati Hum’, ‘Siya Ke Ram’, etc.), Colors (‘Naagin’, ‘Sasural Simar Ka’, ‘Balika Vadhu’, etc.), Zee TV (‘Gangaa’, ‘Kumkum Bhagya’, ‘Ek Mutthi Aasman’, etc.) and Sony (‘CID’, ‘Bade Achhe Lagte Hai’, etc.), have been dubbed.
Source : BARC
Interestingly, in the AP/Telangana market none of the channels see an increase in viewership for Hindi-dubbed content. In the other two markets, i.e. Kerala and TN/Pondicherry, Hindi-dubbed content sees mixed response with some channels seeing higher viewership than original content in regional language.
In Kerala, the highest spike is seen by Asianet Plus.
Similarly, in the TN/Pondicherry market, the maximum growth is seen by Polimer, where viewership for Hindi-dubbed content is more than double that of original content. This is on the back of several popular shows.