Internet subscribers, income growth, literacy and dependency ratio are the biggest drivers of growth. That is what the ‘Future of TV in India’, a report authored by Professor Viswanath (Vishy) Pingali (Economics) and Professor Ankur Sinha (Operations and Decision Sciences) at the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad states.
For instance, an increase of 1 million internet subscribers across India increases TV audience by 200,000 viewers. “Internet subscribers are a proxy for other things - the availability of electricity, rising affluence, phone ownership. It does not imply connected TV,” says Sinha.
“In rural India and states which are currently below national per capita income average, income is going to be one of the drivers of TV consumption in India,” adds Pingali. An increase of ₹1 lakh in the gross state domestic product leads to a rise of 4 million viewers all over India. But this figure jumps to 17 million for rural India and 25 million for lower income states. That means while an increase in income levels in Mumbai may not lead to a rise in TV audience in the city, in a village in Nashik District or states such as Bihar, it leads to a greater increase in TV audience.
Both Pingali and Sinha point to the most important variable from a demographic lens – dependency. “Everyone keeps talking about the demographic dividend in India which is going to change in the next few years. A key variable that we looked at is the dependency ratio – the number of people who are not in the working population divided by the number of people in the working population. It gives you a rough idea of the fraction of dependents in the economy. As India ages, that is another reason for growth in TV,” says Pingali. A percentage rise in dependency ratio leads to a rise of 300,000 TV viewers all India.
The professor duo emphasises that the impact of all these variables on urban or affluent India is not as high because the consumption basket doesn’t change substantially for them. For a family that is just starting to earn well, a TV is among the first things it will buy.
The report focuses on where TV audiences – irrespective of what is watched on it, the technology used to send data or signals, whether the TV is analogue/internet enabled – will grow. Pingali and Sinha have used a statistical regression framework to analyse variations in TV audiences across markets over multiple years. This is then used to predict audience numbers with the help of covariates such as internet subscribers, literacy rate, income levels, dependency ratio, availability of micro-credit and states below the national average on per capita income.
 "An increase of 1 million internet subscribers across India increases TV audience by 200,000 viewers")