BARC report reveals key insights on rural viewership

BARC India's latest report 'Time to go rural' has thrown up some key insights on television consumption in rural markets.These findings will impact overall viewership once rural data is integrated into the all-India market.

Out of the 153.5 million households, there are 77.5 million households in urban India. Of these, 57.1 million households are in 1 lakh+ towns, while BARC currently reports on 55 million households. As per Census 2011, there has been a 75 per cent growth in the proportion of TV households in rural India, compared to 2001. For urban households, this growth stands at 20%.

Key Findings:

The report says that the average daily reach will go up three times and touch 450 million with the inclusion of rural data.

Once rural data is included, the 30-minute gross impression will shoot up 2.5 times at 19.52 billion (ratings in 000s, average for week 21-week 32). Out of this 8.8 billion half-hour gross impressions were from rural, while urban accounted for 10.7 billion gross impressions, with 7.7 billion of the latter from 1 lakh+ C&S markets.

Average time spent on television in rural areas was 2 hours, 43 minutes and 26 seconds (week 21-32). This is compared to 3 hours, 31 minutes and 30 seconds in 1 lakh+ C&S towns and 3 hours, 24 minutes and 17 seconds in urban India. All India average time spent (urban+ rural) is 3 hours, 3 minutes 25 seconds.

Coming to segments, one of the key findings was that 2 in 5 rural audiences are in NCCS AB.

As seen above, 23.3 per cent rural audiences are in NCCS B, while 15.9 per cent are in NCCS A. A total of 39.2 per cent audience in rural India comprise of NCCS AB. NCCS C rural is at 46.3 per cent, while it is only 14.6 per cent in NCCS DE.

At 20.6 per cent, rural India gets in the highest share in audiences in the 22-30 age bracket, while 55.6 per cent of rural audiences fall into the age group of 15-40 years (week 31-32).

Some geographical insights:

As per the above data, [All India (urban+rural),week 21-32 avg], rural contribution is more than 50 per cent in seven large geographies such as Odisha, Bihar, PHCHPJK (includes Punjab, Haryana, Union territory of Chandigarh, Himachal Pradesh, and Jammu & Kashmir), Assam and North-East, Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan.

On genres:

According to the report, the 30-minute gross impression for HSM (Hindi Speaking Markets) was at 9 billion. Out of this, rural contributed 3.9 billion, which is 44 per cent of the gross billion impressions in HSM. 41 per cent were from 1 lakh + C&S homes, while the rest (15 per cent) were from other urban.

When it comes to Hindi general entertainment channels (GEC), rural adds 2.4 billion to the total pie, making it 5.36 billion gross.

At the all-India level, a very interesting insight was that rural contributed 45 per cent to the English entertainment genre, which is higher than the contribution of the 1 lakh+ C&S market (41 per cent). Of the 8 million gross impressions recorded for English entertainment, rural India contributed 3.4 million.