DD regional channels post excellent revenue growth, says TAM ADEX

Contrary to general expectations, Doordarshan's (DD) regional channels have notched up excellent revenue growth in the last few years, according to a recent study by TAM ADEX (the TV and press monitoring service that TAM Media acquired from VNU-owned sister company, ORG-Marg recently).

The study notes that this is unexpected because several regional language private channels in a host of Indian languages - including Marathi, Punjabi, Bangla, Bhojpuri etc - have become operational in the recent past. Because of this, the state-owned network Doordarshan, which already had channels in these languages, was expected to lose ground in terms of revenue shares. While it did so initially - when DD regional lost revenue shares from 4.1 per cent (of the total TV revenues) in 2000 to 3.0 per cent in 2001 - in 2002 these stations managed to bounce back into the reckoning.

According to the TAM ADEX study, till October 2002 DD-Mumbai led the pack. Its revenue share as part of total TV revenues jumped from 0.6 per cent to 1.1 per cent during 2001-2002 as shown in Figure 1. The study notes this has happened because of some smart programming and marketing tactics used by DD-Mumbai (Marathi).

What is even more interesting is that in October, DD's regional channels touched their highest revenue shares in the last three years. From a revenue share of 4.1 per cent in 2000 down to 3.0 per cent in 2001, the shares have gone up to almost 4.7 per cent in January-October 2002 as seen in Figure 2.

If we specifically look at the performance of DD-Mumbai, the revenue increase could be a function of both - aggressive marketing as well as genuine improvement in performance as shown in Figure 3.

What will be interesting to see now, is how the festive season impacts the DD regional channels. Watch this space for more. © 2002 agencyfaqs!