Time spent on watching TV, with smartphone rises as people stay indoors: BARC data

Time spent on watching television and with the smartphone has increased amid the coronavirus crisis as people spend more time indoors, according to data released by Broadcast Audience Research Council 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, the Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) India said in a statement.

India was put in lockdown on March 25, but a lot of states like Maharashtra had gone into the lockdown mode days ahead as well.

It said 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 crisis being tracked widely, 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.