Indians watching more TV amid lockdown, viewership up by 6%: BARC data

Amid nationwide lockdown to prevent the spread of Covid-19, Indians are watching more TV and with the smartphone, according to data released by Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) on Friday.

For the week between March 14 to March 20, there was a 6 per cent increase in the reach of the television, while the average time per user went up by 2 per cent, BARC India said in a statement.

The nation went into lockdown on March 25, but a lot of states like Maharashtra, Kerala had gone into the lockdown mode days ahead as well.

The data also pointed out that Prime Minister Narendra Modi's address on the complete lockdown itself was watched by 197 million Indians on their TV sets.

There is a higher propensity to watch TV between 8 am to 5 pm, or the non-prime time hours, as more number of people are home.

With updates about the outbreak being tracked widely by the national and state media, there was an increase in news consumption on TV, with a 57 per cent rise in impressions, it said.

Channels in movies and kids genres also received higher impressions, as familieshave more time to be spent together, it said.

On the smartphone front, time spent by a single user has gone up by 6.2 per cent, while video-on-demand apps have gone up by 3 per cent, it said.

News apps saw an 8 per cent increase and a 17 per cent increase in time spent per user, it said, attributing the same to non-English sources of information.

People have increased the time spent chatting (up 23 per cent) and also on social media platforms (up by 25 per cent), it said.

Facebook, Instagram and TikTok have seen significant increases not only in time spent per user per week but also in the sessions per user per week.