Covid-19 Impact: What’s happening in the TV & Smartphone Landscape (Edition 1)

FOCUS

This document – Crisis Consumption: An Insights Series into TV, Smartphone & Landscape (Edition 1) – is a slide deck prepared by the Broadcast Audience Research Council, India (BARC; an association of broadcasters, advertisers, and advertising and media agencies) and Nielsen (a data analytics company with headquarters in the USA). It presents data on the impact of the Covid-19 led ‘disruption’ – which started impacting India in the middle of March, 2020 – on television ‘consumption’ and smartphone usage. The sources of this data and methods of collection are not mentioned.

This first edition of the BARC-Nielsen Insights series was released on March 27, 2020. In 29 slides, it depicts changes in the viewing of Hindi TV channels, changes TV viewing across genres and languages, and time spent on e-retail platforms since the Covid-19 period began. It also contains data on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s TV addresses on Covid-19 on March 19 and 24, 2020.

It considers January 2020, as the pre Covid-19 disruption period in India – January 11 to 31 for analysing ‘television behaviour’, and January 13 to February 2 for ‘smartphone behaviour’. The Covid-19 disruption period is March 14 to 20 for analysing television behaviour and March 16 to 22 for smartphone behaviour.

The second edition, Crisis Consumption: An Insights Series into TV, Smartphone & Audiences (Edition 2), was released on April 2, 2020. It discusses advertising trends since the Covid-19 disruption and recommendations for advertisers, TV channels and digital services. Both editions of the series mention global TV viewing statistics and ‘The India Landscape’ of TV and smartphone behaviour.

    FACTOIDS

  1. The average number of television viewers grew by 32 million – from 560 million in the pre Covid-19 period to 592 million in the Covid-19 disruption period. The daily viewing time per user increased from 3 hours 46 minutes to 3 hours 51 minutes in this period, on average.

  2. The total Hindi language TV consumption increased by seven per cent between the pre Covid-19 and Covid-19 periods.

  3. Persons between 2 and 14 years of age consumed 20 per cent more TV in the Covid-19 period than they did in the weeks prior to that.

  4. The total ‘non-prime time’ (6 a.m. to 6 p.m.) TV viewership increased by 20 per cent between the pre Covid-19 and Covid-19 periods – 18 per cent in urban areas and 23 per cent in rural areas.

  5. There was a two per cent decrease in the prime time TV viewership (6 p.m. to 12 a.m.) – a 5 per cent decrease in rural areas and no change in viewership in urban areas – between the two periods.

  6. Smartphone usage increased by 1.5 hours per user in the Covid-19 disruption period.

  7. Consumers (as the slides refer to them) spent 25 per cent more time on social networking platforms and 23 per cent more time on online ‘chatting’ between the pre Covid-19 and Covid-19 periods.

  8. Consumers (as the slides refer to them) accessed Instagram and Tik Tok 20 per cent more times per week in the Covid-19 disruption period than they did in the pre Covid-19 period. They accessed Facebook 18 per cent more in this time.

  9. As compared to the pre Covid-19 period, there was an increase in ‘consumption’ on social networking, video streaming and gaming platforms between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. in the Covid-19 disruption period.

  10. In the 15 to 24 age group, people spent 16 per cent more time gaming on smartphone apps than they did in the pre Covid-19 period.

  11. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s address declaring a ‘complete lockdown’ on March 24, 2020, had 197 million viewers and garnered a total of 3,891 million viewing minutes. Modi’s ‘Janta Curfew’ address on March 19, 2020, drew in 83 million viewers and 1,275 million viewing minutes.


    Focus and Factoids by Archana Shukla.


    PARI Library's health archive project is part of an initiative supported by the Azim Premji University to develop a free-access repository of health-related reports relevant to rural India.

AUTHOR

BARC India and Nielsen, USA

COPYRIGHT

BARC India and Nielsen, USA

PUBLICATION DATE

27 Mar, 2020

TAGS

#tv-viewership #smartphone-usage #covid-19-impact #covid-19

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