One area that has however, been a topic of debate & discussion in the media industry has been the viability and growth potential of regional news channels. We at TAM Analysis Desk analyzed one such market, Andhra Pradesh, which has witnessed the launch of two news channels in a space of six months.

For comparison, we tracked the time spent on various genres including news across three successive quarters- Oct-Dec, 2003, Jan-Mar and Apr-June, 2004. A look at the following chart reveals the fact that the time spent on News channels in AP has gone up considerably from a meager 2 minutes per day during the period Oct-Dec, 2003 to an impressive 11 minutes for the latest quarter, April-June, 2004.

It is obvious that the spurt in time spent on news channel in the latest quarter has largely been due to the Union and Railway Budget. But still, the fact that the regional news channels were able to get the viewers hooked on for a national event is noteworthy. This presents a clear case of a need gap for news in local language getting fulfilled. But this theory needs to validated across various regional markets to investigate whether local language news works across markets. But it certainly seems to have worked in Andhra Pradesh. We at TAM Analysis Desk would study this trend further and give you more such insights in the coming days.