MUMBAI: Numerous soothsayers have time and again been saying that linear TV worldwide - and in India - is dying.

But shush, the Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) has come out with a report entitled The Changing Face of TV in India that clearly states that the good old idiot box is doing very well - thank you.

Some of the reasons TV is flourishing, JIO juggernaut or not, is because of the improving state of electricity, digitisation, increasing nuclear families, better distribution, growth of free to air (FTA) channels, increasing migration, an increase in the middle class bulge and the continued sustenance of single TV homes.

The BARC report points out that in 2015 there were 162 channels, in 2017 they had risen 74 per cent to 282, while pay channels grew only 14 per cent from 210 to 240 in the same period. This has resulted in pay TV viewership falling from 77 per cent to 69 per cent, while FTA viewing has gone up from 23 per cent to 31 per cent. Channels have been delivering content in various languages that has led to a spurt in viewing. For instance, Gujarati programming viewing has grown 146 per cent in 2017 over 2016; Assamese 123 per cent, Marathi 74 per cent and Bangla 68 per cent.

What has been remarkable, says the BARC report, is that between 2005 and 2018 the number of channels launched skyrocketed from 130 to 800 plus. Most of these were delivered by DTH or cable TV, which saw terrestrial TV – read Doordarshan – viewership getting eroded from 50 per cent to two per cent in the same period while total DTH's and cable TV’s shares jumped from 50 per cent to 98 per cent.

BARC has estimated that the TV universe size in India is 183 million households (99 million in rural and 84 million in urban) representing 780 million individuals. But the sad - or rather the good - news is that 87 per cent of urban India has been penetrated by TV while the figure for rural is 52 per cent. This number should delight any broadcaster as there are many homes that are yet to be reached by television.

The viewership monitoring firm has revealed that almost 86 per cent of India has the old world fat cathode ray tube TV; flat screen/LED/LCD TVs are there in only 14 per cent of the national population (20 per cent in urban and eight per cent in rural).

Plus there is the fact that the number of multi TV households is 5.1 per cent in urban India and 1.9 per cent in rural India. Almost 97 per cent of Indian homes have just a single TV set. Has the TV revolution really hit India, one may pause and ask, keeping in mind these numbers?

What’s more, only 23 per cent of rich large joint families belonging to NCS A+ have multiple TVs, the majority are happy with their single television. So money is not a criterion for buying a second TV set -  big fat Gujarati or Sindhi or Tamil or Punjabi families seem to be happy watching their TV in their living rooms together. The family that watches TV together stays together, it seems.

BARC has stated in its report that altogether there were 560 million tune ins daily leading to an overall national consumption of three hours 44 minutes and 28 seconds of TV daily. What was remarkable is that even though the southern markets have only 191 million tune-ins, it led to a lot more gorging on TV as compared to the tune-ins in Hindi speaking market (HSM) which numbered 375 million. As a whole, southern viewers tuned into TV for four hours nine minutes and 25 seconds; while their Hindi speaking cousins stayed glued for three hours 31 minutes and 36 seconds daily.

Viewers in Maharashtra watched good old TV for four hours one minute and 36 seconds while viewers in Andhra Pradesh/Telangana tuned in for four hours 12 minutes and 56 seconds. BARC says there is a lot of headroom for growth as Punjab/Haryana/Himachal Pradesh and JK watched about three hours and 28 minutes of TV daily as compared to the Portugal TV viewing public whose consumption crossed fours and 36 minutes every day.

Even as naysayers have been saying that the youth of India have forsaken their living room TV viewing for personal viewing on portable devices, BARC says that this is all humbug. In fact, it says that viewership in the 15 to 30 age group has increased in just a year and that demographic consumes the most amount of TV daily.

The BARC report has come up with some interesting bite-sized nuggets about TV viewing habits:

• Rising temperatures (read: the onset of summer) led to a fall in viewership in both 2016 and 2017 from week 14 to week 30.

• Viewers in the south tend to watch more TV during festival holidays while those in the Hindi speaking markets don’t make any extra efforts to reach for their remotes. For instance, viewing in the south went up 16 per cent on 30 September 2017, namely Dussera, while it went up one per cent in HSM. This trend was starker in the case of Diwali between 18 and 20 October 2017. Viewing in Tamil Nadu rose 30 per cent; in Kerala 30 per cent; in Andhra Pradesh 19 per cent and in Karnataka 21 per cent. The HSM folks - well they watched just one per cent more TV.

• Public holidays are the time when both the HSM and south market viewers tend to stay glued to their living room TV sets. On Independence Day in 2017 viewership in both HSM and south went up 19 per cent.

• Migration is impacting consumption of language content in different states. Bhojpuri TV, for instance, gets 44 per cent of its viewing share from Bihar/Jaharkand and 15 per cent from Uttar Pradesh/Uttarakhand. However, 41 per cent of its consumption is coming from other states with Gujarat/Daman & Diu and Dadra Nagar Haveli accounting for 6.5 per cent of this; Delhi for 4.9 per cent and Assam, Northeast Sikkim for 4.1 per cent. Tamil is the second most popular language in Bengaluru accounting for 16 per cent viewership while Telugu accounts for seven per cent and Hindi three per cent. Kannada, of course, is the main language at 74 per cent.

• States that are more literate are watching more TV. Maharashtra/Delhi, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat/Daman & Diu and Dadra & Nagar Haveli, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana figure among the high TV watching states and they also have literacy rates in the range of 68 per cent to almost 90 per cent.

• Cricket's viewership is getting chipped away. Where once almost all of India huddled around cricket games on TV, in 2017, the game with the willow accounted for 69 per cent of viewing; kabaddi for 15 per cent; wrestling and soccer for five per cent each while other sports accounted for the remainder viewer. What is noteworthy is the 83 per cent growth in viewership for kabaddi in the year.

• Salman Khan, yes the man India loves, ruled among the top Hindi movies watched since 2015. Four of his films figure in the top 15 list with Bajrangi Bhaijaan at an eye-popping 7.82; Prem Ratan Dhan Payo at 7.66; Sultan at 3.49 and Tubelight at 2.87.

• Women are increasingly watching news; demonetisation week on 8 November 2016  saw overall news viewership rise 56 per cent between the previous four week's viewership and week 45 of 2016. Women kept glued to TV, showing an increase of 37 per cent in their viewership in that period. In week 1 of 2017 during Rashtra ke Naam Sandesh, 3.6 times more women tuned into the show as compared to the previous four weeks, while the figure for men was 3.5 times.

• Hindi content is being watched by 500 million people weekly (read GEC); with the Hindi movie genre being tuned into by 471 million viewers every week. Most of the genres grew in their weekly reach between 2016 and 2017 with Hindi music, Hindi news, kids, Hindi youth, sports, Bhojpuri GEC, Hindi news regional, Bhojpuri movies, Telugu GECs, and infotainment notching up 319 million, 309 million, 255 million, 176 million, 159 million, 141 million, 139 million, 128 million, 107 million and 107 million respectively. The only three genres which de-grew in the period were: sports at 200 million, Tamil GEC at 106 million and English movies at 82 million in their weekly reach.

• Urban India loves watching reality TV shows/talent searches; drama and soaps; mythologicals and costume dramas, horror serials, game shows, cartoons/animation and feature films in that order.

• The genre wise breakup for rural India is dramas/soaps, mythological dramas, talent searches and reality shows, children’s programme, game shows/quiz, feature films and finally cartoons and animation.

Dramas on TV also see very stark trends according to BARC. For instance, marriage tracks seem to boost ratings 13 per cent as compared to the previous weeks, says BARC. Jail tracks see eyeballs go up 15 per cent as compared to previous weeks. The coming together of casts of different shows helps boost ratings by 20 per cent, it has revealed in its study. Drama rules even in news since July 2016 with consistent developments and events all the time leading to the genre seeing some increases in viewing, ditto with sports - a gripping match with ups and downs, preferable ups for India sends TV audiences into a frenzy.