Media consumption patterns are dynamic not static. They reflect: a) the 'degree of intensity' in the relationship between the audience and the medium; b) the ratio of core and peripheral audience(s) nurtured by the channel; c) which is largely influenced by the relevance of the information and/or entertainment (provided by the medium) and d) they also reflect some vital socio-economic trends.
Affluent people, especially PMEBs ration their media time, carefully.
Consequently, viewership by choice or 'appointment viewership' is particularly noticeable in the cabsat channels in Asia. Further, their 'media-time' is under pressure with more options. Hence, maintaining content relevance becomes even more vital for media owners to retain their core audience base during recessionary phases.
To explore these issues, I analysed the 'Past 7 days viewership' trends for the leading cabsat channels and the Average Issue Readership of the major regional publications in the latest PAX survey - comparing their current quarterly average figures against that of Q3 (2002). As is the case with different product categories, recessions do not hit all media in the same way. The 'core' audience is largely retained, as long as the content is relevant to them. It is the 'peripheral' and the 'conditional' audience(s), which are increasingly lost and won as socio-economic pressures defile the landscape.
For savvy media marketers, PAX can be mined to generate sufficient insights for understanding, managing, distributing and selling their brands. Unfortunately, very few media owners look upon their medium as a brand and their audience base as a constituency. In the flurry to announce "mine's bigger than yours" every time a new survey is published, most media giants do not even bother to explore the components within their constituency. Consequently, they leave themselves open to flank attacks.
The 15 per cent growth trend of flank attacker, Zee TV, even in markets outside India did not surprise me. It just reiterated the increasing presence of non-resident-Indian business communities and the number of Indian professionals in Southeast Asia. The raison d'etre of this channel is that it provides a means of retaining ties with the home culture. This million plus viewership did not emerge overnight. Most of them re-allocated or re-aligned their appointment viewership.
I would also urge my erstwhile Sopa colleagues to revive the press-promotion think-tank. The recent demise of major players like Asiaweek and Asian Business was not accidental. Regional publications are under pressure to retain readership volume as well as time spent per issue. The increasingly Darwinian struggle for retaining one's 'share-of-PMEB-media-time' is a reality in Asia.