MUMBAI: The TV industry is growing and so is kids’ viewership. Since 98 per cent of India is still single TV homes, co-viewing is extensive and leads to better targeting options while demand for localised content and regional content are a boon to creators. Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) India unravelled its findings on ‘Catching the youngest viewers’ at FICCI Frames 2019 held on the third day of the event. BARC India senior VP business development partnerships Elbert D’silva shared that 21 per cent of total viewership on linear TV sets comes from kids. With one in every four viewers being a kid, there is a high engagement level and time spent is also increasing.

Just 12 per cent watch kids’ content, a whopping 49 per cent of kids watch general entertainment channels (GECs), followed by 24 per cent of them watching movies. Likewise, a large chunk of viewership doesn’t only come from kids’ category; in fact, it comes from age-groups as well. 38 per cent of the viewership comes from 2-14 years of age group, followed by 10 per cent from 15-21 years of age group, 14 per cent and 18 per cent fall under the 22-30 years and 31-40 years of age group respectively. This is due to co-viewing. But kids from NCCS households watch more of kids’ genre because premium homes are multiple TV households. Here kids’ genre gets about 16 per cent of viewership.

He highlighted that females aged 31-40 years spend 30 per cent of their co-viewing time with kids and this offers significant targeting options to the advertisers. Bifurcating the female audiences across different age groups that spend the highest time in co-viewing, the report revealed that 15-21-year-olds spend 12 per cent, 22-30-year-olds spend 22 per cent, age group from 31-40 spends 30 per cent while 9 per cent and 7 per cent time are spent by the females that fall under 41-50 years and 51-60 years respectively.

D’silva further shared that feature films give better ROI with higher per minute impressions. It stated that 76 per cent of the avg imp/min comes from the game, talk or quiz shows, followed by 155 avg imp/min from cartoons and animations and 508 avg imp/min from feature films.

Talking about home-grown content, he said that there has been a rapid increase of localised content on the kids’ genre and duration of it on national kids channels has gone up by 18 per cent. Comparing the growth in 2018 to 2016, the jump has been from 33 per cent to 39 per cent of overall content. Preference of content amongst kids changes as they grow older and so the preference for Indian content is higher among younger age groups.

Apart from this, kids channels that broadcast in multiple languages enjoy a clear lead in the viewership. The report disclosed that 84 per cent of kids viewership accrues to the 11 channels that have multi-language feeds, 7 per cent from Hindi, 3 per cent from Tamil, whereas Telugu, Malayalam and Kannada gain 2 per cent viewership for each language respectively.

Regional kids channels also have a high growth potential. The Sun Network’s Chutti TV in Tamil Nadu commands 17 per cent share with the rest going to national kids’ channels, Chintu TV in Karnataka gets 23 per cent, Kushi TV in Andhra Pradesh/Telangana gets 16 per cent while Kochu TV in Kerala gets the highest share of 40 per cent viewership.

Top advertised products are those which are consumed by the children, but mothers are also the target audience since they are the decision makers. Boost and Fisher Price are brands targeting kids while Colgate, Harpic and Vicks are focused on the mothers watching TV.