The Hindu Business Line : Muted response

I have all along believed, innocently, that I am one of the peevish bohemians to press the mute button as soon as a channel announces a commercial break or does it unannounced. But a conscious observation over a sustained period of time of the habits of friends and relatives has dispelled this notion. Pressing the mute button on commercial breaks seems to be as common as pressing the panic button at the slightest hint of trouble by an average Indian.

A survey on the lines of TRP ratings would bear out my putative but by no means tentative findings. And such a survey would hopefully bring about revolutionary changes in the world of media buying.

For example, media buyers and advertisers would learn to their amazement, nay consternation, that far from paying the maximum during the commercial breaks of popular programmes, they should be doing the opposite because more absorbing the programme more riveted is the attention with a concomitant thumbs down to the commercials as evident from the pressing of the mute button almost as a reflex action by the viewer the moment, for example, an over has been completed in an absorbing cricket match.

To be sure, the commercial break is not silenced out of spite or vengeance. Rather, the occasion is used as a gossip break — the family clustered around the TV exchanges notes about the programme, or the attire/demeanour of the protagonist in the soap, or the suspect action of the bowler, or the hasty stroke play of the batsman.

In fact, it won't be far-fetched to say that the propensity to press the mute button is inversely proportional to the popularity of the programme — commercial breaks during lesser programmes catch greater number of eyeballs simply because the viewers have very little to discuss and would rather put up with the ads. It is another matter though that channel surfing is incidentally more rampant during such insipid programmes.

The widespread propensity to press the mute button calls into question the very effectiveness of advertising on television. Add to this the fleeting and ephemeral nature of such advertisements — calling for repetition of the same ad ad nauseam costing a fortune for the advertiser before he grabs a decent mind share of the viewer — and the message would be loud and clear. Ads on the print medium do not suffer from this hazard simply because there is no way they can be muted. Yes, they can be ignored. But an arresting print ad arguably would have a greater shelf life, as it were, and hence deliver more bang for buck for the advertiser.

(The author is a New Delhi-based Chartered Accountant.)

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