Star News, which functioned as a bilingual (English-Hindi) news channel till March 2003, shifted its focus to being a Hindi news channel from April 2003 onwards. This change in the channel's profile, from English-Hindi to only Hindi, triggered a change amongst the various categories and the advertisers investing in the channel, post April 2003. We at AdEx India tried to probe further into this issue. This article reflects the insights that we derived.

Let's take a look at the total duration growth of Star News across the four quarters. The first quarter, that is January-March value, is indexed to 100. Subsequently, we see a negative growth (value=89) in the second quarter, April-June, but the third quarter starts off on a positive growth (value=99). The growth index sees a dip in the later part of the third quarter, but this may be because the data is only till November 2003.

The categories have done an absolute about turn from the second quarter (post April) onwards (refer below table). The categories, which were at top positions in the first quarter, were not only displaced from their top position but they did not even figure in the top category positions, post April.

Categories like cars/jeeps, corporate brand image, insurance, cellular phone service and automotive fuel, which were in the top five positions, in the pre April period, did not even register in the top 10 categories in the post April period (except for cars/jeeps). Instead categories like hosiery, suitings and writing instruments, which were in the 48, 20 and 30 position respectively, in the first quarter were placed fourth, first and sixth, in the last quarter.