The month of April saw a flurry of news channel launches. It surely had its impact on the advertising fortunes of the existing players. A lot of new advertisers are testing out TV as a medium for the first time as news channels have followed the Aaj Tak route and roped-in smaller advertisers also. The table below compares the number of product categories that were on air in the month of April in different genre of channels.

The table clearly highlights the fact that entirely different sets of product categories have chosen to advertise on Hindi news channels vis-à-vis English ones. English news channels though, have lost out in the race with garnering only 41 categories compared to 114 for Hindi news channels.

Even more interesting trends emerge when one delves deeper into the story. A comparison of top 5 categories on different genre of channels clearly highlights the function to which different channels have benefited for various product categories.

As expected, there is a stark contrast in the profile of product categories that advertise on Hindi News channel vs English ones. Some of the commoners are the summer categories like air conditioners, refrigerators and soft drinks. All the high profile upscale male skewed product categories seem to shell their money on English movie and news channels. Presence of hair oils and prickly heat powder category in Hindi Movie channel genre highlights the mass appeal of this genre. The viewership pie chart below clarifies the viewership base of these channel genres.

An interesting case in point is the unique content channels like Discovery etc. These channels get viewership from all SEC (Socio-Economic Class) of society but somehow still manage to attract high profile product categories.

A look into News channels in particular
The table below shows the number of brands that advertised on various news channels

in the month of April 2003.

The picture is pretty much as expected for Aaj tak and Zee News. However, channels like Headlines Today, and the two NDTV channels seem to be just behind in the race. As comes out clear from the above analysis, that though news channels as a category has been able to rope-in newer product categories on Television, the share split of viewership and advertising has definitely not been equal. Headlines Today and the NDTV channels have a long way to go compared to Sahara Samay which has silently established itself.

The objective of these papers is to look at information available to us in diverse formats. The number of brands and categories advertising on different Channel Genres is yet another interesting way to understand nuances of our industry.

A TAM ADEX Release
(Sources used - TAM Peoplemeter data & TAM TV ADEX)