TV Consumer Market Study

Background

Television (TV) as a mass medium of video content consumption, plays a pivotal role in empowering citizens with information, education and entertainment. It has witnessed tremendous growth over the past few years. As per a 2020 Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) report, TV viewership increased by 9 percent from 2019. Further, estimates suggest that total pay-TV subscriber base shall expand from 127mn in 2020 to 134mn by 2025, with the total industry revenue increasing to USD12.3bn by 2025 from USD8.9bn in 2020.

However, it is feared that these projections may not hold true since reportedly, the TV ecosystem has witnessed a loss of 1.5 mn active TV Direct-to-Home (DTH) and cable TV subscribers during the quarter July to September 2021, and discontinuation of niche channels such as AXN, Star World, FYI TV18. Media reports also highlighted potential threats to local cable operators (LCOs) and estimates that there is a possibility of 30 to 40 percent increase in cable bills for viewers .

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has made attempts to ensure progressive orderly growth of the TV viewing ecosystem and further its objective of consumer welfare. The regulator has also undertaken exercises like consumer surveys in the past to identify inadequacies impacting consumers. This, coupled with the reported concerns, highlights the importance of evaluating evolving consumers’ perceptions on parameters such as consumer choice, convenience in channel selection, consumer satisfaction with respect to pricing and quality of service, while deliberating on pricing and other TRAI regulations.

In light of the above, it is imperative to understand how consumer perspectives on television consumption have evolved especially in the past few years and capture trends on the set parameters, indicated above. Accordingly, CUTS is executing an on-ground research based study, with the objective of gathering consumer insights and perspectives with respect to TV channel based video consumption.

What’s New’

• Project brief