It is not just war clouds that have inexorably been gathering across the world as America readies its response to the 11 September terrorist attacks that hit the World Trade Centre in New York and the Pentagon. Every news channel (as well as newspaper, magazine, news portal) worth its salt pulled out all the possible stops as blanket coverage acquired a whole new meaning on the tube. When the most powerful nation in the history of the human race sneezes how can it be anything but that. How objective this coverage remains highly suspect though but that requires another article and another forum.

Coming back to the news coverage, major US broadcasters NBC, CBS, ABC and Fox dropped commercials and all regular programming on the Tuesday and Wednesday post attack to provide non-stop coverage of the crisis. Even channels like ESPN and MTV picked up the news feeds of their sister broadcast networks for the first time ever. There has been no let-up since as the US prepares its people and the world for a coming attack.

The fallout of this in revenue terms for the US networks has been enormous what with the advertising industry having literally ground to a halt in America. With nonstop coverage across all networks, advertisers are postponing new ad campaigns and ad agencies themselves are finding that the market is in paralysis. Reports say media outlets have lost hundreds of million dollars in advertising. According to analysts, the crisis could extend the advertising downturn even further. Television broadcasters alone are losing nearly $40 million a day in local and national advertising because of the extended news coverage. Cable networks are losing money as well. Some news reports mark up the losses even higher, putting the total losses to the industry as high as $100 million a day. The second figure seems a tad exaggerated (like some of the exaggerations that are being readily bandied around in the name of news reports?)

In India, however, the situation is markedly different. Though no channel executive expects any significant increases in revenues no one is talking losses. That is if war doesn't break out. Then there will be a total hit across the industry as a whole because of the expected deep fall that the economy as a whole is expected to go into. The fears of that happening are already being witnessed on the stock exchanges with both the Bombay Stock Exchange and the National Stock Exchange plummeting on the last day of trading for the week last Friday.

MAKES ITS MARK

In viewership terms however, the story is completely different. Market research agency TAM Media Research's TAM data on the kind of viewership figures obtained on the four days (11 September through to 14 September) after the attack show certain clear trends coming through.

While viewership preferences do differ region to region there are also common trends observed:

1) On an average there has been a 14-fold increase in viewership for all news channels after the attacks took place. Some centres have seen a smaller jump and others a bigger one. The lowest jump is seen in Bangalore and Delhi where viewership saw an average 6-fold increase in viewership compared to the prior week.

The super-literate state of Kerala's Cochin city saw the highest jump of all - 47-fold - on Tuesday which gradually fell off as the week progressed to reach roughly 7 times that of the previous week by Friday. But the kind of jump in viewership seen in the Cochin figures is also because people in the state hardly accessed the regular news channels. The general entertainment channels Asianet and Surya (part of the Sun bouquet), which carry regular news bulletins throughout the day, in normal circumstances suffice as far as newsworthy information goes. This is clearly borne out by the data which show TVRs of 0.06 for all news channels put together in the prior week catapulting to 2.84 TVRs on Tuesday. And it was BBC (1.49) and CNN (0.74) which carved up most of the viewership on Tuesday with Star News coming in third (0.47). 2)

Taking an overall picture, the first two days saw viewers switching to the foreign channels but as the week wore on the language channels saw ever increasing numbers. This clearly indicates that when it comes to spot news reportage of international events, local channels really can't compete. And when we talk foreign channels it is the BBC which is the clear leader and not CNN.

3) If one channel amongst the news channels stood out it was old Beeb. Across all days and across all cities it is very much up there in the viewerscope. The exceptions were Ahmedabad and Calcutta, where it was CNN that garnered significant viewership outside that of the Hindi news channels.

4) There was one centre however, where CNN actually led all other news channels and that was in the West Bengal capital Calcutta. Strangely the viewership trends for Day 1 were reversed here. On Tuesday Star News was the leader followed by the BBC and then CNN. But Wednesday onwards it was CNN that led with Star News coming in second. By Friday, however, Star had again managed to push itself to the top slot with CNN following. However, average viewership for all the four days puts Star in the driver's seat.

IN THE NORTH AAJ TAK RULES

5) Regionwise there are clear trends. In the north (Delhi) and west (Ahmedabad), Hindi news channels led with Aaj Tak the clear leader. This clearly shows that amongst the predominantly Hindi speaking viewers Aaj Tak is the preferred choice amongst all news channels, with its prime time viewership, channel share, time spent per channel overtaking that of Zee News and Star News. As per TAM figures (this is for data culled before the strikes) the maximum viewership of Aaj Tak was 3,07,000 in comparison to 1,89,000 of Zee News and 85,000 of Star News. These figures must have significantly increased for all the news channels.

6) In the Tamil language citadel of Chennai it was Sun News which led the way from Day 1 with BBC second. However, on Friday, there was a switch seen with BBC nudging ahead. Will somebody please explain this as it doesn't appear to follow any pattern.

7) In the southern cities of Bangalore, Hyderabad and Cochin it was the Beeb that was the leader (possibly also because there are no language news channels specific to these centres).

ZEE NEWS FRONTRUNNER IN MUMBAI

8) Mumbai is Mumbai and has to be different. This was shown in the ratings figures as well which didn't follow any other city. On Day 1 it was the Beeb that got in the numbers, but Day 2 onwards Zee News was the leader with the BBC gradually getting pushed down the ladder.

9) And where was national broadcaster Doordarshan's news channel in all this? Nowhere in the reckoning. Which explains why the mandarins in Mandi House have taken the decision to put DD News out of its misery and phase out the channel.

ON AD REVENUE FRONT STAR NEWS STILL THE LEADER

The projected ad revenues for all the news channels this year is roughly between Rs 1000 million and Rs 1200 million of a total of RS 30,000 million ad spend that flows into television. All these figures may well go haywire though so it should be borne in mind that these are estimates based on a semblance of normalcy returning to the market.

Out of the RS 1200 million, RS 400 to RS 500 million is what Star News mops up, RS 250 million to RS 300 million goes to Aaj Tak while Zee News gets RS 250 million of the ad pie.

Among the international news channels, CNBC India and BBC together generate roughly RS 250 million out of India. The numbers for CNN are difficult to assess but are quite poor, according to sources.

While there is certainly going to be an increased interest in news channels and current affairs programmes in general, there is a viewpoint that says if this were to be sustained over a long period, the way people look at general entertainment channels may also see changes. Saas-bahu tales set in more realistic settings anyone?

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