[icernet] War on TV grabs eyeballs and revenues

[Arul Selvan]

War fatigue has clearly not hit TV news channels. As the war enters a 
crucial phase, latest figures indicate a 100 per cent jump in viewership 
for news channels. In terms of ad revenues, Indian news channels 
continue to hold their own — of course, as the US media is eschewing 
advertising, it has lost $77 million in ad revenues in just the first 
week of the war. AC Nielson research till March 29 reveals that viewers 
chose BBC World and CNN over domestic news channels. While BBC’s 
viewership doubled during the war, CNN viewership grew by three times. 
BBC World’s audience reach went up to 10 million viewers during the 
first three days of the war — its share equalled that of CNN and CNBC 
put together.

The data also indicated that Aaj Tak was the market leader in the Hindi 
news segment with 59 per cent viewership compared to Zee’s 28 per cent 
and Star News’ 8 per cent. One reason for the attraction towards BBC and 
CNN is explained by the absence of an English news channel for metro 
viewers to tune into. Star News became 100 per cent Hindi and Headlines 
Today was launched only a couple of days back. For the first time, there 
was no English channel targeting domestic viewers in the country.

While data was not available for Doordarshan, the national broadcaster’s 
coverage has been perceived as the clear winner among Indian channels. 
Often, DD was keeping pace with CNN’s breaking news — thanks to its 
outsourcing policy. A tie-up with CNN and Reuters helped. Even new 
entrants like Sahara have sent reporters to the war zone. Another 
interesting trend is how TV has scored over the Net. Although the war is 
not over, cable news has declared victory over online news, according to 
many of the surveys coming out in the US. In fact, research indicated 
that Net ranked below newspapers in the war coverage.

Source
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/html/uncomp/articleshow?msid=42903047