Role of Demographic Variables in Consumption of News on TV Channels in India

Abstract

TV news channels have been facing competition not just from the industry rivals but also from the players disseminating news from different platforms. This has made it imperative for the news channels to devise marketing strategies that can be targeted on specific audience in an effective manner. The first step hence is to identify these segments which can be targeted. TV news channels need to understand the association between various demographic variables and the attributes related to the consumption of news on TV News channels. However, there are limited studies that link specific demographic variables to the TV new consumptions behaviour in India leaving channels to market to its audience in a one-size- fits-all manner which is expensive and ineffective. Findings suggest that there are specific associations between some of the demographic variables and traits that define consumption behaviour of audience on TV news channel. The findings can help TV news channels to identify the right segment for their content, while also create newer content based on the identified segments based on demographic variables. It would also help the channels to spend their marketing dollars on narrower and specific segments of audience, thus achieving better returns on their marketing spends.