How the traditional and digital media growing in India?

Whole world around us is shifting from traditional to digital media. Smart phones, tablets, PCs and other such devices are bringing seminal change in life. It is expected that by 2016 the number of internet users will cross the mark of 546 million in India who will largely use wireless connections for internet. Increase in the use of tablet will further impact the internet usage in India. India is moving towards a young population who is tech savvy. Most of the companies target youth and so use digital media to promote their products or services. But for a greater impact and reach there is a dire need to amalgamate both the digital as well as traditional media.

45% of the total media industry is represented by Television. Not only this, but television penetration is further growing because of the rise in the income level of lower middle class. After the US and China, India is the third largest TV market in the world and has 146 million television households. Since 2005, 12-16million TV sets have been added each year. In 2011, the overall television industry was INR 329 billion and expected to reach INR 735 billion in 2016. In 2011 total number of channels was 623 and many were there in the approval queue. Potential of this sector lies in penetration as well as viewing time.

Regional TV markets form a considerable portion of total TV segment in India and also the impact of economic slowdown is less on regional channel as compared to national channel. If compared then viewership of Bengali and Marathi channel is more as compared to other regional channels. Because of this, many broadcasters at International level are trying hands in the regional markets of India for deeper reach. Discovery channel has launched Discovery Tamil to reap the benefit of a greater number of viewers and advertisers. 24 hour Bangla feed was launched by Fox Traveller, UTV Action Telugu launched by UTV and 9X Tashan in Punjab and 9X Jhakaas in Marathi was launched by 9XM Media.

Similarly there is an increase in the viewership of music genre because of additional channels. Music segment has further increased in reach because of social media which helps by providing engagement.

Print industry is growing but at slightly lower rate. Newspaper industry worth 13 billion is the largest contributor to print media. Growth perspective lies in the emerging cities rather than metros. Readership of Hindi newspaper is more than newspaper in English and vernacular language. But readers of print media are shifting to online media as they want news in real time. Because print media is not able to fulfill these requirements so a decline in sales has been seen in print media. Print media across the globe is finding new ways to increase its readership because youth of today’s generation is much absorbed in social media and Internet. Few years back, the Brain Hunt 2012 was launched by newspaper Dainik Bhaskar for developing reading habit among youth. Many national newspapers and magazines have their regional versions.

Social media is acting a medium to drive traffic to the newspaper websites. Feeds of reporters, journalists, eminent personalities, newspaper are followed on Twitter, users like Facebook page to get real time news. Social media has actually given a new shape to journalism which is dominated by user engagement. But print media can make use of social media to increase its readership. In case of magazine, niche and interest specific magazines have replaced the general magazines.

Digital media is developing rapidly in India and with the growth of mobile devices it will grow further. Wireless connections and mobile devices will give rise to new era of growth. By 2016 the internet connections in India is expected to grow over 400 million and by that time about 90% of all internet connections will be wireless. The number of broadband connections are expected to reach 43 million by 2016. 40% of the population in India will have internet access by 2016. India has yet to see growth in e-book market.

 

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