Kerala - Thiruvananthapuram   

`Regional channels on the growth path'

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Regional satellite TV channels, including those in Malayalam, are on the growth path, particularly in niche areas such as news, says Siddharth Mukherjee, head, corporate communications, TAM India, the premier TV rating agency in the country.

Speaking to The Hindu over the phone from Mumbai, Mr. Mukherjee said the days to come would witness rapid fragmentation of the industry into general entertainment segment, news segment and children's segment. Advertisers are likely to focus more on regional channels as their objective is to reach their message to the farthest corner of the country and this also should contribute to the growth of the regional channels, he pointed out.

Mr. Mukherjee said the growth of the regional channels would, in turn, fuel the growth of production houses and technology solution providers. The process has already begun and should see new talents showing off their wares in areas such as hardware and software production and provision of technology solutions in the coming years. The change in the character of the programme genres would be reflective of the changing TV viewing culture in the country, he added.

What C. L. Thomas, associate editor, Asianet, has to say about the way news and current affairs programmes are being received in Kerala appears to bear out what Mr. Mukherjee says. Citing TAM reports, Mr. Thomas says that a steady growth in viewership is the visible news and current affairs segment when the TV viewing habits of those aged above 15 years and above in smaller towns having population between one lakh and one million is analysed. An interesting aspect of this growth is that a fairly large number of the viewers are women. This does not mean that audience share of news and current affairs programmes is anywhere near that of serials, but the shift is too remarkable to be missed, he adds.

C. Gouridasan Nair

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