The hunger for knowledge ends at the couch

Network expansions, regional language feeds, India- focused programming, expanding markets and a steady growth in advertising volumes— that's the story of the non-fiction, non-news television in India, a genre referred to as 'infotainment' in television jargon. So if you thought that TV in India was just limited to unending saas-bahu sagas and never ending rounds of frivolous breaking news, it's time to think again, for networks like Discovery and National Geographic Channel (NGC) are finally coming of age in India to claim their share of the television pie.

According to PN Vasanti, director, Centre for Media Studies (CMS), Indian television is rapidly transforming as the country is going through a phase of growth and development, and that is serving as a Philip for this genre. "The world is opening up and as India is growing in terms of consumption, growth, economy as well as education, demand for high quality knowledge content is growing. You have to cater to the niche interests that are being created as a result and these channels are doing just that," she says adding that while these channels initially catered to the highly educated niche audience in the metros, they are fast expanding further than that.


The channels too find the trend encouraging. "Cable channels by themselves define programming and with growth in education, awareness, standard of living and evolving demographics and mindsets, unique content channels would most certainly grow in this space," says Rahul Johri, senior VP, Discovery India. According to Ramon Chibb, senior VP, content, NGC and Fox History & Entertainment, "the industry is hugely cluttered and therefore each channel needs to have a distinct identity and offerings to pull the audience. It is this clutter that makes channels like NGC stand out." Also, these channels are primarily targeting the young urban Indian. 

Thinking Indian
One strategy which seems to have worked wonders for these channels is simultaneous Hindi feeds and growth in India based content. This is evident from the fact that apart from launching three new channels earlier this year, Discovery also launched a simultaneous 24-hour feed in Tamil. "Our programming is commentary based and that is where the local language works. We are evaluating other language options as well," says Johri. Chibb concurs, "This (local feeds) is definitely a good penetration strategy and we are evaluating regional feeds too." According to Vasanti, "this is where the growth lies in the future. Even rural India has considerable wealth and people have the hunger to know and absorb as much as possible."

Going local works really well in India. "We have had shows like Paul Merton in India, MasterClass and My City My History recently on the channel that completely focus on the Indian sub-continent. It has worked really well for us. However, India is yet to match the quality of non-fiction programming that gets made in the Western world," says Chibb. However, the channels insist that these shows are not just meant for the Indian audience but also for international distribution. "Indian programming gives us more traction and the audience identifies more with the channel. But a lot of our India shows are also consumed by international audiences. Such as the Shah Rukh Khan series that we did on Discovery Travel & Living was a huge success in South East Asian countries also," says Johri. He also insists that instead of just focusing on Indianised content, the endeavour is to give the viewers a healthy mix of high quality content. In fact, the story of these channels to a certain extent mirrors that of kids and music channels in yester years. "Kids and music channels began feeds in Hindi and started providing a mix of Indian and international programming a few years ago. It was a huge success and you can see the same trend in infotainment as well," says a media expert. 

Statistically speaking
Apart from a steady growth in viewership in the infotainment genre amidst a fall in most others as reflected in TAM media research's data for the last four years, advertising volumes too have been steadily rising for infotainment channels. According to data by AdEX, a division of TAM that looks at the advertising market, the year on year ad volumes has grown by 4%, 15% and 20% in 2008, 2009 and 2010 (January to June). As for viewer ship, the infotainment genre's share in terms of viewership rose by 50% in the last three years, while English entertainment, English news, English movies and even sports saw a decline in viewership.

According to the latest available TAM data, the infotainment genre has 1.2% of the total viewership for Indian television. Amongst the infotainment channels, the 2009 TAM data places Discovery channel at 53%, NGC at 26%, Animal Planet at 17% and Fox History & Entertainment at 5%. 

Industry insiders believe that ad volumes are yet another indicator. "These channels have not been niche for quite sometime now and although they might not be as big as the larger Hindi general entertainment channels (GECs), they are certainly matching ratings of the mid-level GECs. Advertisers across the board are now advertising on these channels," says Punitha Arumugam, CEO of the Madison Media Group. "The language of their programming and their potential audience is universal, which obviously results in advertisers showing keen interest, right from FMCGs to telecom companies," she says. 

Clearly, infotainment can now be certainly considered a force to reckon with in the 134 mn strong Indian TV market. With a rapidly increasing and broadening viewership for infotainment channels, it's not just for the geeks anymore....