One would have imagined that it’s the reality shows that soar in the television popularity sweepstakes, after the dramas that grace our television sets during prime time. But in terms of absolute numbers, Comedy is the second most viewed genre in the Hindi General Entertainment Channel space, according to an analysis done by the industry body Broadcast Audience Research Council India (BARC) exclusively for this newspaper.
Based on an all-day analysis of 11 top GECs — Star Plus, Colors, Sony, Sab, &TV, Zee TV, Life OK, Star Utsav, Zee Anmol, Sony Pal and Rishtey — over the past four weeks, BARC executives point out that comedy generated 25,94,935 impressions’000s of a total of 1,75,22,574 impressions’000s in the four weeks that were analysed.
Impressions’000 as a measurement stands for the number of individuals in 000s of a target audience who viewed an “Event”, averaged across minutes.
The comedy genre has also been the second-largest in terms of the share of duration of content aired. Comedy shows lapped up nearly 14 per cent of the total airtime across the four weeks under review and accounted for nearly 60,000 minutes of programming.
Media experts like Meenakshi Menon, founder, Spatial Access, a media audit and analytics firm points out that comedy programmes are a safer bet from a channel’s point of view because of the consistency of the programming which ensures that the ratings do not fluctuate dramatically. Hence, these are seen as a safe bet by advertisers.
Ashish Bhasin, Chairman & CEO South Asia - Dentsu Aegis Network, points out that the comedy genre will only receive a further boost as convergence takes place and a host of comedy acts from AIB to TVF are able to increase their reach among the masses.
However, it will be still a long time before comedy as a genre can come close to soaps in terms of loyalty and appointment viewership. BARC India executives agree and say, “Even though comedy has been doing well for channels, it has still not replaced drama. The drama genre continues to be the flavour when it comes to scheduling and loyalty.”