English Media: Too Small to Matter in India?
Living in an urban household, especially one in New Delhi, warps one’s perception of who shapes public opinion in the country. Looking at the debates on English News channels playing on TV gives one a feeling that Arnab Goswami and Barkha Dutt are big opinion makers in India. The first person to suggest to me that regional and vernacular outlets were the key opinion makers in India was Vivek Gupta, the Rajya Sabha MP from West Bengal who also runs a Hindi newspaper called Sanmarg. He told me over dinner how the opinion of masses has nothing to do with what is said on English news channels or printed in English Newspapers. We discussed how influential people in the country get influenced by the English media and the people who watch these channels are the financially well to do component of Indian society, yet the reach of these outlets is highly limited.
The extent of this disparity in the reach of vernacular media versus the English media hadn’t struck me until very recently. While browsing twitter I found out about an organization called Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) India that analyzes the TRP of TV shows and channels.
The data from the organization shows that the reach of the top Hindi News Channel in the country, India TV, is more than 220 times greater than that of the most watched English News Channel, Times Now. India TV had 6.38 crore impressions in a week while times now only had 2.79 lakh impressions in the same time period. This means that Times Now only has 0.44% of India TVs reach.
The disparity is even greater for the second rankers on the list with Aaj Tak having 6.34 crore impressions and News 9 having 1.42 lakhs. Aaj Tak has over 440 times more reach than News 9, and over 220 times more reach than Times Now.
Cumulatively, the top 5 Hindi News Channels had 25 crore 72 lakh impressions in a week while the top 5 English News Channels had a reach of just 7 lakh 64 thousand. This makes the reach of the top 5 Hindi News Channels over 335 times greater than that of English News Channels, implying that the top 5 English News Channels have less than 0.3% of the reach of the top 5 Hindi News Channels.
In fact, the reach of the English News Channels is much lower than that of most regional news channels, as Gujarati News Channels alone had 1.55 Crore impressions while a single regional channel like ETV Bihar Jharkhand had 14 Lakh 62 Thousand impressions, which is almost double the reach of the top 5 English News Channels combined.
A similar picture exists in print media too, where the share of Hindi Newspapers accounts for 37.8% of the total circulation and that of Regional Language Newspapers accounts for 44.6%, leaving only 17.6% for the English Newspapers.
Accounting for the fact that the big English newspapers are all national while the regional language and Hindi newspapers are mostly regional would imply that in any given geography, the regional players have a much larger readership, and consequently a much stronger role in forming public opinion.
Amongst the 20 most circulated daily newspapers there are only 3 English newspapers while there are 7 Hindi newspapers and 10 regional dailies.
The English newspapers on this list had a circulation of 1.13 Crores in 2015 while the Hindi newspapers had a circulation of 3.20 Crores and the regional dailies had a circulation of 2.71 Crores.
Since I’m working in the field of political consulting it’s only natural for me to look at the political implications of this. Since most politicians and leaders are only active and known at the local level and the reach of local media is far stronger, the regional media should be of much greater interest and importance to most politicians, even at the cost of the big name English News outlets.
Twitter: @INshivams EMail: contact@shivamsingh.in
