BARC India updates TV Universe; total TV viewership jumps up by 18%

BARC India, today, released its weekly viewership data based on a revised Universe Estimate (UE), which is based on the results of Broadcast India Survey, the largest-ever research study undertaken to ascertain TV Universe and Television Viewing Habits in India. With this, BARC India has updated and aligned its TV Universe in line with ground-level changes in demographics, TV ownership, and connection type, language preference, changes in NCCS profiles etc.

Fieldwork for the Broadcast India Survey was carried out over November 2015 to February 2016, and covered 3,00,000 homes across 590 Districts comprising about 4300 Towns/Villages. All 1 Lakh+ towns were covered, while towns below 1 Lakh were selected by a Probability Proportional to Size (PPS) method.

With the new UE, Week 8 has seen a significant increase of 18 per cent in Total TV viewership in the country. Total TV impressions have grown from 22.7 billion in week 7 to 26.7 billion impressions in week 8.

“BI 2016 is one of the biggest surveys done in the country so far. The TV universe in India is ever growing and changing and so is the profile and choice of a TV viewer. The last survey done was in 2013 and the last Census was in 2011. The consumer and viewer landscape is changing rapidly, with electrification, prosperity, changing modes of signal and digitization. We wanted to reflect this change in viewership numbers and hence conducted our own Establishment Survey. This will help our subscribers and the ecosystem align their strategies for better targeting. The new reality is TV viewership is rapidly growing and how, ” said Partho Dasgupta, CEO, BARC India.

The study also highlights the fact that TV HHs have grown faster in NCCS B and C, thus increasing the share of the middle class. While NCCS A has dropped from 22 per cent to 21 per cent, NCCS B and C have gone up from 24 per cent to 27 per cent and 31 per cent to 32 per cent respectively. NCCS D/E on the other hand has de-grown from 23 per cent to 20 per cent. These trends are in line with fragmentation of family sizes (leading to lower average family sizes) and rising economic growth and rising prosperity. It also shows that India has more nuclear families without elders than ever before, and it is also the dominant family group among TV owning homes. While composition of joint families in the universe has come down from 26 per cent to 22 per cent, nuclear families with elders has grown from 53 per cent to 58 per cent.

Some key changes have been seen in the BI study like electrification, migration, digitization, rise in smaller and nuclear family culture, increase in middle class, inclusion of rural markets and single TV households, which has an impact on TV viewership behaviour. 

BI-2016, the report based on the survey, contains not just an updated count and composition of TV homes across urban and rural India, but also offers data and insights that would be of immense value to marketers and advertisers. It contains granular data and information on media consumption habits of Indians, as well as select durable ownership and packaged goods purchase profiles. It is an updated database of Indian consumer behaviour.

Every genre has seen a significant growth in viewership, owing to the new Universe Estimate. The Highlights of Week 8 data are: