Now playing: An uneven advertising volume on national Hindi news channels

At a time when advertising revenue of news channels was down by 50% in April, wherein top five news channels lost about 40% revenues and the tail-enders lost to the tune of 80%, three national Hindi news channels recorded a growth in advertising time in Week 17 over the pre-Covid period.

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Before we look deeper into the advertising minutes running per hour on individual channels, it is important to note that the volume is not directly proportional to the revenues in such testing times when the entire economy, except essential goods and services, has hit the pause button.

That essentially means while some channels are resilient and carrying ads only if they are getting a fair rate, some are running ads on much lower rates or giving their clients a fair percentage of discounts on the basis of long-term relationships.

The drop in FCT in the news genre across languages was 6% in Week 17 over the pre-Covid period. The current week witnessed 78 lakh seconds of advertising on news channels as compared to 83 lakh seconds in the week before the coronavirus outbreak.

According to BARC India, the FCT level in Hindi, Punjabi, Gujarati, Oriya and English was higher/ same as the pre-Covid period.

Considering national Hindi news channels, the advertising volume has witnessed a drop of 18% in Week 17 over the pre-Covid period. The advertising volume on national Hindi news channels dropped to 10.7 lakh seconds during the week between April 25 and May 1, down 18% from 13.1 lakh seconds in the pre-Covid period.

A week before, the drop in FCT on the national Hindi news channels was only 6%. In Week 16, their advertising volume stood at 12.3 lakh seconds. It slipped by 13% in the current week to 10.7 lakh seconds.

Going by advertising volume, three out of 13 national news channels — News18 India, Zee Hindustan and Zee News — witnessed a growth in their FCT. Republic Bharat witnessed a marginal drop of 2% while TV9 Bharatvarsh has witnessed a maximum drop in its free commercial time in Week 17.

India’s most-watched Hindi news channel Aaj Tak has witnessed 17% drop in its FCT while advertising volume is down by 15% on ABP News. India TV is airing almost half of the advertising as compared to the pre-Covid period.

In terms of advertising minutes per hour, Zee News is airing 15.1 minutes of advertisement per hour while Aaj Tak, ABP News and Republic Bharat have 13.3 minutes of advertisement per hour.

News18 India aired 12.3 minutes of advertisement while India TV aired 7.8 minutes of ads per hour.

Inventory in seconds on national Hindi news channels in Week 17, 2020:

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