A survey has revealed that digital penetration in Tamil Nadu has increased by 17% and the time spent in front of the television sets has increased by 48 minutes in 2011 compared to the previous year. Interestingly, the survey revealed that women over 35 are the largest viewers of dubbed serials and news.

The days of watching the epics of Ramanand Sagar’s Ramayan and B R Chopra’s Maha Bharat on DD channel decades ago in the living room by an entire family huddled together are unlikely to happen again, because of the increasing fragmentation of viewership. “This new phenomenon has emerged because of the rise of the assertive, impatient and highly articulate generation of today in most Indian families, thanks to newer media and broadcast technologies, increasing diversities of content, and of course, advancement of new age mediums, that are able to cater to the differing tastes simultaneously,” said L V Krishnan, CEO of TAM India Ltd, a company engaged in the business of TV Audience Measurement(TAM).

TAM’s report on TV viewing patterns under the title ‘Impatient Generation’ threw up some interesting results for the Southern states. While cable and satellite households at an all India level is currently 126 million, digital households are 42 million in number, registering a 63% growth.

TAM’s survey was conducted between July and Nov 2011 with face to face interviews of over 5,14,000 people across urban and rural India. While in TN, the general entertainment and regional music channels have witnessed an increased popularity, in AP total digital penetration itself has been as low as 8%. However, overall time spent in front of the TV has grown to 3 hours daily, the growth is just 1% over 2010 in this state. News with local flavour dominated high viewership pattern in Tamil Nadu with news of Kanimozhi’s arrest and India’s World Cup winning recording maximum viewers.

In Karnataka, serials and TV soaps have provided an almost 3 times return on investment, with the viewership for this segment increasing by 20% in 2011.

Ironically, in Kerala, people are spending less time in front of the television with a fall of 6% in overall viewership in 2011. The good news is the introduction of new channels has resulted in a growth in viewing again the last few weeks of 2011. Malayalam general entertainment channels dominate with a lion share of 50%.

Across the country, the viewership of Hindi channels has fallen considerably by 6.5%. Ironically, dubbed versions of popular Hindi soaps in Tamil have picked up quite well in South. Both airtime and viewership of South dubbed movies has seen a clear growth in the year 2011. Share of Hindi news genre has witnessed a 10% growth in 2011.

-express buzz