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Shyam G. Menon
Latha Venkatraman

MUMBAI, April 18

"The truth of an individual's nature begins to emerge as instinct shows its old forgotten face" - renowned ice climber Jeff Lowe in `The Ice Experience.'

Ice climbing and television viewership are poles apart. But as the world before the camera sees tumultuous times, instinctive shifts are happening on soap-washed television screens, the journey from 9/11 to Ayodhya through Godhra firmly placing news as a critical programming genre.

In Gujarat, the epicentre of the communal tensions that rocked India from late February 2002 onward, life under curfew meant a rise in television viewership at places to one of its highest levels, the other occasion for such highs having been the killer earthquake of January 2001.

TAM ratings over a five-week period spanning January 27 to March 2 show the time spent before television by a target group of cable & satellite (C&S) individuals of 15 years and above in Ahmedabad shooting up from an average of 894.5 minutes per week for the first four weeks (i.e., January 27 - February 23), to 1,017 minutes in the fifth. The day part considered for analysis spanned 7 a.m hrs to 11.59 p.m. for all days of the week.

Within this, the main news channels - Aaj Tak, Zee News, Star News, BBC, CNN and CNBC - witnessed an increase in the time spent watching them, from an average of 65 minutes per week over the first four weeks, to 126 minutes in the fifth. Viewing of Aaj Tak shot up from 17 minutes to 74 minutes, Zee News from 10 minutes to 33 minutes and Star News from 1.5 minutes to six minutes.

On the other hand, time spent by Ahmedabad viewers on the main entertainment channels - Star Plus, Zee TV & Sony - during the period, dipped from 350.25 minutes to 328 minutes. But Godhra and Ayodhya were a mere peaking of trends starting in September 2001, perhaps earlier still from the Gujarat temblor.

"News as a genre witnessed a dramatic shift in 2001," Mr L.V. Krishnan, Chief Executive Officer, TAM Media Research, said. According to him, post-9/11, news viewing jumped up dramatically across the world. In Mumbai, for instance, the daily reach of BBC had progressed through 0.7 per cent on September 10, 2001, to 12.8 per cent on September 11, 23.4 per cent on September 12 and 15.4 per cent by September 13. The catalytic effect of local language was underlined in the daily reach of 23.3 per cent on September 11 for Aaj Tak in Delhi and 31.7 per cent, same day for Sun News, in Chennai.

Events were not scarce for news channels. The list including the Gujarat earthquake, 9/11, military campaign in Afghanistan, attack on the Parliament, Godhra and Ayodhya's rendezvous with March 15.

"As a medium, news is very powerful today," Mr Krishnan said. The commercial significance of this shift, from a return on investment (RoI) perspective, is evident from the following: in 2001, news programming accounted for eight per cent of time on channels but fetched 24 per cent of viewership. Against this, the once dominant genre of mythologicals occupied 39 per cent of time but garnered just five per cent of viewership.

That is almost like proving Mr Lowe right. As real life gets deadly in the name of God, God Himself takes a back seat!

However, in a dynamic medium like television, no trend is permanent. It holds true for the new found gains of news channels as well. But these seemingly ephemeral shifts aside, there have been some other developments too.

TAM monitors 174 channels. In 2000, the big 12 channels accounted for 68 per cent of total viewership. By 2001, that channel share had slipped to 62 per cent, courtesy new channels and those delivering specific genres of programming. Alongside, comes news from the other side of coin - the television business appears to be slowly becoming a commodity market.

Sample this - in 2000, only 19 per cent of all programmes fetched a rating of less than 0.2 per cent. In just a year, that has risen to 30 per cent of programmes sliding into the below 0.2 per cent category. "There is a clear need for innovative programming," Mr Krishnan said.

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