Has the switch from analogue to digital, meaning from conventional co-axial cable to set-top box and direct-to-home (DTH) platforms, changed your TV watching habits?
Reason could be regional channels in ‘exclusive’ digital packages
MUMBAI: Has the switch from analogue to digital, meaning from conventional co-axial cable to set-top box and direct-to-home (DTH) platforms, changed your TV watching habits? In other words, would you watch more TV just because you have 300-plus channels to choose from?
The unanimous answer seems to be ‘no’, if you go by the responses of 90% of the 300 marketers and consultants at a digital addressability conference by TV viewership measurement and analysis firm TAM Media Research.
Digital viewers get 43 more channels than their analogue counterparts. In addition, Delhi gets 27 channels more than Mumbai does. According to a TAM Media Research survey, digital has penetrated as many as 30% of TV-watching households in these two metros.
Of course, just because people have more choices doesn’t mean they are taking them. Most viewers are watching the same channels they did before they were bombarded with choices.
Also, the time spent watching TV in digital homes isn’t very different from analogue homes in Mumbai and Delhi, says the TAM survey.
Pradeep Hejmadi, senior vice-president (marketing and S-Group) at TAM, felt the reason could be that a majority of the “exclusive channels” in digital are regional language channels. “So exclusivity sort of becomes meaningless. It’s simply a number game now but the time spent watching TV is no different,” he said.
One surprise finding of the TAM survey is that the rural penetration of digital is four times that of urban. “All thanks to DD Direct Plus, which is possibly the only free DTH service,” said Hejmadi.
The differences between the digital and analogue households, however, crop up when you analyse the genres, especially English entertainment, movies and news channels. On an average, analogue viewers in Mumbai spent four minutes a week on English entertainment. By contrast, their digital counterparts spent 29 minutes on the same content. Similarly, digital viewers in Delhi watched English movies five times more than their analogue counterparts did.
Hejmadi attributes this to the fact that these channels travel on obscure frequencies on the analogue platform and so, the reception is not clear. Sometimes, they are not even tuned in to. Digital bundles all the English channels together at proper frequencies and channel-surfing becomes easier.
Interestingly, cricket could be losing eyeballs on the digital mode. Viewers on this mode tend to digress more to other sports such as soccer and tennis that those on the analogue mode. The time spent on cricket over a period of 13 weeks was 619 minutes for analogue and 536 minutes for digital in Mumbai. In Delhi, this was 322 minutes and 218 minutes, respectively.
It’s all about demographics, media experts feel. Upper-class viewers are more open to new technologies and so, are the first to switch to digital alternatives. Their tastes are well-reflected in the patterns seen in the survey.
TAM has now set up a panel called the Elite Panel to study the TV trends among elite viewers, who are the target audience for many advertisers.
s_tanvi@dnaindia.net
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