Amongst the growing popularity of general entertainment channels in the past few years, the Non fiction genre in India has been fighting hard to keep its neck over the water. Lack of interest from the viewers side coupled with the rising popularity of general entertainment channels has lead to a situation where the Non fiction channels are fighting hard to create a market for themselves. Discovery and National Geographic both have been fighting hard to expand the market ever since they entered. So much so that they see each others presence beneficial to each other since that helps them expand the market and increase awareness and interest on the programming.

Today we look at a few trends on how these channels are performing amongst the audience. We consider a TG 15 + Yrs, M/F, Sec ABC. We look at 9 city data for the analysis.

Both NGC and Discovery together manage just about 1% of the prime time channel share as compared with the main stream entertainment channels which manage to garner more than 35% (Star Plus, Zee TV and Sony) put together.

Discovery and NGC have both recently announced some new initiatives. Where Discovery has implemented a programming concept based on specific different programming for specific time bands, NGC has started with the Prime Time band.

A look at the TVR trends below reveals that NGC is strong in the Sourthern markets whereas Discovery is stronger in the larger markets namely Delhi and Mumbai. On the overall basis Discovery is ahead of NGC.

The reach of the channels during Prime Time is pretty good though with Discovery and NGC both managing a % reach between 30 - 50%. This combined with the low ratings above suggests that the time people spend on these channels is very low which leads to low TVRs.

Viewer Profile:
NGC and Discovery have different viewership profiles though. Whereas Discovery gets close to 40% of its audience from the 15-24 Yr age group NGC derives a high 50% of the audience from the 25-34 year age group.

Change in TVR over the past year
The channels have been working hard to increase their viewer base in India. Where Discovery has been very aggressive in its marketing efforts NGC has benefited from being a part of the Star bouquet. Contrary to popular expectations and despite the hard efforts put in the by these channels the viewer base for the genre has actually shrunk in the last year or so. A comparison of the Prime Time Cum reach figures for Week 6-14, Yr 2001 with the same weeks for this year reveals that there has been a downward trend in all the major centers.
Delhi surprisingly has seen the largest drop with reach falling by almost 10% points for both the channels. The shift obviously has been to the main stream entertainment channels and news channels which have gained in the last on year or so.