Linear TV consumption has grown by 67% to 1 trillion man mins per week in 2019: BARC

The linear TV consumption has grown by a whopping 67% over the last three to 1 trillion man minutes per week in 2019 from 600 billion man minutes in 2015, Broadcasters Audience Research Council India (BARC India) COO Romil Ramgarhia said during a presentation at ‘The Future Of Video Indian 2019′ summit organised by the Asia Video Industry Association (AVIA).

Ramgarhia also noted that the TV is the biggest medium with daily tune-ins of 613 million. The print and social media pale in comparison to TV with 173 million total daily readership of newspapers and 250 million active social media users.

He also stated that Indians are spending 45 minutes more time watching TV daily. The video consumption on TV has increased to 3 hours 53 minutes in 2019 from 3 hours 7 minutes in 2015.

The consumption of regional content is witnessing an exponential growth with Bhojpuri and Bengali registering the highest growth. Bengali grew at 144% in 2018 followed by Bhojpuri (139%), Odia (100%), Gujarati (92%), Marathi (75%), and Kannada (58%).

The growth of viewership for regional has encouraged broadcasters to launch more channels in local languages. According to BARC, 75 new regional channels were added in 2018 of which 52 were in the regional space.

It also stated that the regional language consumption is not limited to mainstream genres. Sports Viewership has received a boost from availability in local language feeds. Almost 45% of sports viewership comes from Hindi and regional languages.

The GEC and movie genre contribute almost 76% to the total viewership while all other genres have the remaining 24% share. Ramgarhia also shared that GECs are watched by 300 million viewers daily.

As far as sports is concerned, 65% of the live sports viewership comes from Cricket.