It was the best of times, it was the worst of times… Charles Dickens wrote these lines in the 19th century, but they are very true in the 21st century too — especially when one is referring to 2020. And, Broadcast India Research Council India (BARC India), despite some internal challenges and controversies swirling around it, didn’t shy away from saying so in its third edition of What India Watched, titled The Year After Two Thousand & Nineteen.

So, what does the BARC yearbook say? Lots when it comes to viewing trends in a year (2020) that not only rocked the globe with an unknown virus bringing the whole world almost to its knees, but also opened up new viewing hours as families in India, like elsewhere on Planet Earth, were cooped up at home during forced lockdown period that stretched for well over four months.

If non-primetime emerged as the new prime time when day time viewing increased to 53 per cent in 2020, total TV viewership grew by 9 per cent, driven by average time spent clocking four hours two minutes in 2020 from3.42 hours in 2019.

GECs, movies and kids genre viewership grew largely due to COVID-19 lockdown with families home bound and practically locked up within four walls as India experienced one of the strictest shutdowns. An overwhelming majority of Indians turned to their TV screens, which served as a window to the outside world even as it retained its preeminent destination for `daily dose of entertainment’.

TV viewership tripled during lockdown period from its average viewership of 7 per cent of total viewership. Week 12 garnered highest viewership till date with 260 billion viewing minutes as the Indian PM Narendra Modi announced janata curfew or people’s voluntary curfew on TV and the general news of official arrival of COVID in India. The viewership of Balakot air strike (in Pakistan occupied areas) and Wing Commander Abhinandan’s return from Pakistan after his plane crashed in Week 9 of 2019 had clocked a previous high of 148 billion viewing minutes.

News channels’ viewership is generally driven by events. From a 7 per cent viewership share in pre-COVID period, the genre picked up 21 per cent of the total TV viewership during the peak COVID week, which was BARC’s Week 12, starting March 21, 2020.For the year as a whole, news accounted for 10.4 per cent of the total TV viewership.

News genre showed a significant growth across Hindi-speaking and southern markets in 2020. While the states of Maharastra, Goa and UP/Uttarakhand led the news viewership in HSM, it was led by AP/Telangana and Karnataka in the south market.

All genres, despite a rise in TV viewership, experienced a decline in ad volumes with the exception of movies category that grew 9 per cent. The ad volume trend differs from viewership trends where the fall was observed only in music/youth and sports genres, the BARC yearbook says.

India’s pubcaster Doordarshan understood the lure and power of mythos and used these (shows like Ramayan and Mahabharat) to increase its eyeballs and subsequent advertising revenues. Advertising on DD spiked 31 per cent during lockdown as compared to 2019.

Overall, 2020 saw 12 per cent growth in social/government ads volumes on TV, while the year ended with a robust 20 per cent growth in advertising volumes starting October.

In the year-ender phase, total TV viewership maintained a 6 per cent growth in the closing months of 2020. During the same phase, GEC viewership held on to its healthy growth as new shows got launched and some big ticket programmes/content returned to TV.

During lockdown, news genre scaled new peaks and doubled its viewership during the period, sports genre viewership dropped as live sporting events came to a standstill due to the global pandemic.

The GEC genre as a whole witnessed an 8 per cent growth, but mainly due to a spike in viewership of DD channels that aired reruns of its old hit shows.

However, as some relaxation returned in some parts of the world with limited air services starting, IPL cricket was organized in foreign locations and the sports genre saw a huge spike with the rollout of IPL-13.

During the pre-COVID period, there was a 6 per cent dip in total viewership of TV.

The yearbook viewership trends were analysed broadly in four phases — pre COVID (Jan-March 13, 2020); Coved/Lockdown period (mid March to first week of July); COVID Unlock period (July 4 to Sept 18) and the Yearender period (Sept 19 to Jan 1, 2021).

Advertising has been analysed in phases of pre-COVID (Jan-March 2020); COVID Lockdown (April-June 2020); COVID Unlock (July-September 2020) and Year-ender (Oct-Dec 2020)

In an interview given to CNBCTV18, BARC India Sunil Lulla allayed fears on a crisis besetting the audience measurement system in India, while admitting to aberrations.

“The data is proved, it’s true, it’s authentic and is trusted by hundreds and thousands of advertises. It is about a Rs 30,000 crore business in television if I am not mistaken. I see the data being released every Thursday, I have seen it being used every day because we get a lot of queries from various people, advertisers, agencies and broadcasters of all colour, shape, size, and hue. So, I believe that that the data still is, and will always be, true to what it says – it reports on what Indian watches.

“I think what we are reading about in the media, first of all let me put this into context. It is something that is being investigated by various law enforcement agencies, it is something that is a matter listed in court and discussed in court, and anything I say on it is not appropriate and sub judice and it is a matter of the past. But BARC is continuously enhancing its processes, continuously augmenting everything that it does to ensure that the data it produces is authentic and reliable and it continues to be so,” Lulla said during the interview.