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Broadcast TV in critical state, needs resuscitation

ByShuchi Bansal
Dec 20, 2024 07:24 AM IST

Uday Shankar asserts TV's relevance in India despite declining viewership and ad spends, urging investment in quality content and tailored programming.

In a slew of recent interviews to business dailies Uday Shankar, vice chairperson of the newly formed media joint venture JioStar, said television in India isn’t dead and expressed confidence in its enduring relevance. His statement comes at a time when the traditional television industry has seen declining viewership, fall in pay TV homes and muted advertising spends on the medium.

Broadcast TV in critical state, needs resuscitation
Broadcast TV in critical state, needs resuscitation

In its latest report, TAM Media’s AdEx India noted a 2% decline in TV advertising volumes between January 2024 and September 2024 compared to the same period in 2023.

Lalatendu Das, CEO, Publicis Media, South Asia, said ad volumes across top 50 advertisers on general entertainment channels (GECs) have dropped 6% in 2024 compared to 2023. “There’s an increase in TV households but some drop in TV viewership. Except for Maharashtra, we observe decline in GEC viewership in all other major markets,” he said.

Though Uday Shankar is a staunch advocate of digital platforms, his comment on TV emanates from the fact that JioStar operates more than 100 TV channels and produces 30,000 hours of TV programming. Also, the majority of the 26,000 crore combined revenue of the new entity comes from broadcast TV.

A senior executive working at JioStar said that though cord-cutting is real and pay TV homes had declined from 120 million to 95 million in the last 3 years, there’s been no further erosion. Television remains a highly penetrated medium even though TV universe data from Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) India hasn’t been updated since 2020 when there were 210 million Indian households with a TV set. TV viewing individuals were estimated at 892 million. BARC India chairman Shashi Sinha said they are attempting a fresh TV universe study though extrapolation of numbers from a sample size becomes tough in the absence of government Census which hasn’t taken place since 2011.

TV has headroom for growth as not all of India’s 300 million households have a television. Besides, there are 45 million homes watching DD FreeDish which hosts free-to-air channels which may upgrade to pay TV as their aspirations and income levels rise.

Vikram Malhotra, CEO of Abundantia Entertainment, which makes films and web shows, too echoed Shankar’s sentiment. “Since Indian television always had homogenous, one-size-fits-all programming serving the lowest common denominator, it was impacted by the advent of internet-based delivery of entertainment on YouTube, social media or streaming,” he said.

But middle India still tunes into TV though urban youth have been early adopters of OTT, he said. “Broadcasters too pushed viewers away by promoting their own OTT apps through behind-the-scenes content of reality shows, premiering new films on OTT rather than on TV channels and finally putting live sports on digital,” he said. They accelerated viewer churn from TV to OTT hoping streaming will make them big money.

“But OTT platforms did not become profitable overnight. The investment required and cost of acquiring and retaining customers is relatively higher on OTT than on TV,” Malhotra said.

While streaming is the future, there’s scope to breathe life into TV. The television industry needs to invest in quality content. It’s a bit of a catch 22 as ratings are down, ads are declining so investment in content is not happening leading to customer churn.

The key is to tailor programming as per viewers’ demographic profile. BARC’s Sinha said as the industry’s measurement body it hopes to support broadcasters by launching a premium panel to capture what the affluent segment is watching so that channels can revitalize their content.

Also, the mega merger of The Walt Disney Company and Reliance Industries media assets may help if it infuses funds into the TV business. Das of Publicis Media said the new entity has a strong presence in both broadcast TV as well as digital. “With deeper pockets the broadcaster can experiment with innovative programming, reduce dependence on ad revenues through better subscription strategies, and improve viewer engagement through premium or regional content…However, to truly breathe new life into broadcast TV, the merged entity will need to focus on localisation, bundling, and creating content that cuts across demographics and languages,” he said.

TV is not facing imminent death. But if it continues down the path of poor investment and lack of innovation, value erosion will accelerate.

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