IndiaWatchesTV: Performance media harvests demand. Linear Television creates it

In 1987, when Ramanand Sagar’s Ramayan aired on Sunday mornings, streets emptied, trains were reportedly held up, and families garlanded the television set. Nearly four decades later, nobody garlands the TV any more, but families still gather around it.

According to the FICCI-EY Media & Entertainment Report 2026, about 745 million Indians watch linear television every week. That number held steady through 2025, a year when most headlines were about TV’s decline. Both stories are true, and the gap between them is where the opportunity lies for advertisers.

The numbers, honestly

There’s no point pretending otherwise. FICCI-EY puts TV revenue at ₹61,700 crore in 2025, down from ₹67,900 crore the year before. Linear TV ad revenue fell 10.3% to ₹26,300 crore, its fourth straight year of decline. Pay-TV lost about 11 million subscriptions. Digital media has crossed ₹1,00,000 crore and now takes nearly two of every three advertising rupees.

But look one layer deeper. TV households actually grew, from 186 million in 2023 to 193 million in 2025, and FICCI-EY projects they will cross 200 million by 2028. Free TV homes, led by DD Free Dish, grew from 45 million to 53 million in just two years. Connected TV added about 10 million homes. Linear and CTV ad revenue together held steady at ₹36,200 crore.

Who is Bharat watching?

The linear TV viewer isn’t someone scrolling reels on the Bengaluru metro. Think of a household in Nashik, Gorakhpur or Guntur, where television remains the centre of family viewing. Here, people watch together. The daughter-in-law, the grandfather and the school-going son watch the same serial, the same match and the same bulletin at the same time.

The FICCI-EY data shows what this audience looks like. Non-Hindi content now makes up more than half of all TV viewing. Entertainment, music and movies account for 80% of what people watch. And it isn’t true that only grandparents watch TV: viewers under 50 account for 81% of consumption.

Digital still reaches this Bharat one phone at a time, often on budget handsets where a skippable pre-roll gets five seconds. Television reaches a whole family at once.

Why salience still lives on the big screen

Social clicks don’t build brands. Memory does. When a woman stands in a kirana store in front of fourteen soaps, she reaches for the one that comes to mind first. That’s brand salience, and a brand earns it by reaching people widely and repeatedly, long before they’re ready to buy.

Television is still the most efficient memory machine India has. Lalitaji’s “Surf ki kharid mein hi samajhdaari hai”, Amul’s “Taste of India” and the Fevicol elephant didn’t become part of national memory through precision targeting. They got there through a full-screen, full-volume moment the whole family saw, repeated week after week.

Advertisers know this, which is why they haven’t walked away. TAM AdEx shows that more than 7,200 brands advertised on TV between January and July 2026. FMCG leaders such as Reckitt, HUL and Godrej still dominate. What tells us more is who has joined them. Ad volumes for e-commerce services grew more than ten times, and e-commerce, media and social media brands are now among the top three categories on TV. Digital-first brands built on performance marketing turn to television when they need to become a household name, not just an app.

Performance media harvests demand that already exists. Television plants it.

The last frame

In the Mahabharata, Sanjaya narrated the war to the blind king Dhritarashtra, letting him see what he could not. For millions of Indian homes, television still plays Sanjaya. It’s their window to entertainment, news, cricket, devotion and dreams.

Brands that understand the difference will own Bharat’s memory for the next decade.

Vishal V. Khanna is the Founder of The Sales Strategist and a PhD scholar at NMIMS researching Connected Television in India.

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are solely those of the author and do not in any way represent the views of exchange4media.com.