Over the last few months, TAM has been engaged in materialising the "Project Enhance", which involved capturing viewership information from markets that have never been under viewership reportage. Till the TAM panel Expansion commenced, entire TV media planning for markets like Kerala, Gujarat West Bengal and PHCHP was done by using surrogate markets like Cochin, Ahmedabad, Kolkata, Ludhiana.

Certain markets like West Bengal are extremely critical for most of the advertisers. This note aims to provide a perspective of this market from television point of view.

West Bengal vis-à-vis Other States

Source: NRS 2002
Base : 81 Mn. TV Owning Homes

The above chart explains the share of West Bengal market in the overall TV owning universe. West Bengal has around 7% (5.9 Mn.) of TV owning homes in the entire country.

Evolution of Television Scenario

West Bengal, although, significantly high in terms of share of TV owning homes, is far behind in the TV evolution. Demographic variables like Colour TV and CS penetration serve as critical indicators for determining market evolution stage. The X-Y Scatter below plots all the Indian states on the two parameters viz. Colour TV penetration and C&S Penetration. Kerala has the highest Colour TV penetration and AP enjoys the highest C&S penetration.
West Bengal is far behind the relatively evolved markets like AP, TN ,Delhi etc.

Source: NRS 2002
Base : 81 Mn. TV Owning Homes

Kolkata vs West Bengal :Measuring the Eye-balls !!!
For years, Kolkata has been used as surrogate for TV media planning for West Bengal market. The following pie charts compare the viewership split across channels for the two markets. It comes out quite clearly that the two markets are significantly different from each other in terms of viewership behaviour.

The above two charts indicate that West Bengal is relatively a much more movie driven market than Kolkata. Zee Cinema and Max together hold on to 7% viewership share in West Bengal compared to 3% in Kolkata. Cartoon network shows huge gains in the West Bengal market, the share jumps form 1% in Kolkata to 3% in West Bengal. Also, DD7 seems to perform much better in Kolkata than in West Bengal. Regional channels (i.e. Alpha Bangla, ETV Bangla and Akash Bangla) have a higher share in Kolkata market a compared to West Bengal.

Kolkata watches almost 66% more television per week than West Bengal.
The chart below compares the time spent on watching television in the two markets. The overall viewing in the West Bengal market is significantly lesser than the national average across weekdays and weekends.

Source : TAM Peoplemeter System
Time Period :April 6 to June 7 , 2003
Base : All TV Owning Individuals

Conclusion
The above analysis clearly highlights the fact that viewership patterns in the two markets are significantly different from each other. Not only in terms of overall time spent on watching television, but also in terms of the choice of channels. This information will surely benefit advertisers and brand media planners in fine-tuning their media choices across markets. We would be updating you at regular intervals on key insights that emerge from other markets as well.
So… Stay Tuned …!!!!!!

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