The virtual reality of staying home for 5 weeks

Initially, it took a nudge. Ramayan was airing on Doordarshan (DD). In Mumbai, the seniors in the Singh family had a plan. “We had grown up with Ramayan. We had emotions and nostalgia attached to it. We wanted our kids to know the story, too,” says Ajit Kumar Singh, a banking sector executive. The family of five comprises Singh, his wife, son, 17, daughter, 26, and his 77-year-old mother-in-law.“In the beginning, we had to push our daughter a bit to watch the serial,” he says. Many episodes and weeks later, things have fallen into place. During the lockdown, breakfast is about the family watching Ramayan together. “Initially, I was just curious. What was this serial that held people so much in thrall in the 1980s? Slowly, it has grown on me,” says the daughter, Parul Singh.But it’s the granny, Mandvi Singh, who is the happiest. Life in the big city is a constant chase. “Everybody was busy. We rarely sat down together,” she says. Even when people had the time, they would watch their favourite programmes — news, cooking shows or one of the many soaps — in their own spaces. “Watching Ramayan together in these difficult times is a refreshing change,” says Ajit.The Singh family has a lot of company in these locked-down days in India. On the back of reruns of old serials like Ramayan, Mahabharat and Buniyaad, for the first time since 2015 (when BARC was launched), the state-run DD has become the topviewed channel in the country (see box). 75509426 75509447Note: % change refers to change in numbers between Jan 11-31 (weekly average) and Apr 4-10 Source: All data, unless otherwise specified, are from BARC and Nielsen, which are tracking weekly shifts in consumer behaviour before and during lockdown. And its audience engagement has only grown week after week. Who would have thought that amid the plethora of slickly produced sitcoms, movies and originals, mythological shows produced in the 1980s would keep a nation spellbound in these difficult times? “Retreating into the world of Ramayan and Mahabharat is not just about viewing and entertainment. It is a combination of therapy, nostalgia and remembering god amid an unprecedented crisis,” says Santosh Desai, CEO, Future Brands.A national lockdown that has gone on for five weeks has seen Indians embracing a quieter life. The cacophonous physical world outside has fallen silent, only to be replaced by a vibrant virtual life — experiences streaming via cable, broadband and 4G. News, fantasy, crime, comedy, mythology and pornography all jostle for attention, offering homebound Indians, the more fortunate of them anyway, endless possibilities to stay informed and escape the harsh realities and uncertainties of one of the most tumultuous times in memory.We have been equipping ourselves with necessary gear for a while. This is a country where buying TVs for homes has historically taken precedence over building toilets. Our affinity for media has only been amplified by a surging smartphone usage (50 crore-plus handsets) and internet connections (72 crore plus), thanks to low-cost Chinese phones and the world’s cheapest data plans. 75509821 75509829A life where the virtual takes precedence is a delight for marketers and sociologists. Flows of terabytes of data, relatively easy to measure, can offer an unparalleled peek into human behaviour, the shifting patterns and emerging trends.Not surprisingly, multiple outfits — from research consultancies such as Nielsen, BARC and Similar-Web to search giants such as Google to platforms such as Razorpay in fintech and dating app Truly-Madly — are watching closely. Nielsen (for smartphone data) and BARC (for TV data) have been releasing in-depth weekly reports since the lockdown began, slicing the data to understand the shifts. ET Magazine mined a slew of data sets to bring you insights on India’s digital life in the time of lockdown. 75509847Going Retro Time spent on both TVs and smartphones has gone up, with TV getting the largest share. In both variety and time, viewers are seeking more. Average weekly viewing minutes on TV rose by 38%, even as average number of channels being watched rose from 16 to 22. Some are obvious, like the sharp growth (76%) in non prime time as against prime time (which saw only a 5% uptick) viewing, even as weekly advertising time dipped by 26% to 20 million seconds. With people staying at home, TV viewing time is now spread out through the day. “Content satiates emotional and mental needs as anxiety and panic have risen. We have seen a huge growth of DD and non-prime time viewing,” says Sunil Lulla, CEO, BARC India. Unlike popular perception, DD’s growth has come from across income classes, with upper income households leading the surge. 75509899Intergenerational Co-viewing Sees a Boost Mandvi Singh, 77 Retired PSU executive, Mumbai LOCKDOWN SWITCH: For the first time, three generations have their breakfast together, watching Ramayan on TV “Earlier, we rarely sat together for anything. It is good to see even today’s kids liking Ramayan” “Appeal of DD’s shows cuts across segments with very sticky viewers,” he says. Not only has Ramayan’s viewership grown week after week, it is also marked by co-viewing (22% of children are watching with their grandparents) where families get together to watch. Prasar Bharti CEO Shashi Vempati says, “The viewership growth for DD is across segments. What we are witnessing here is the calculus of segmentation being turned on its head, with wholesome family viewing returning. Many decades back, TV was the glue that brought families together. That is happening again with the epics.” For DD, the lockdown strategy was simple. “We wanted to engage families so that they could stay home to stay safe,” he says. Encouraged, it has launched DD Retro on a pilot basis as a channel to recreate the nostalgia. Meanwhile, consumption of news has grown sharply (219%), followed by movies (73%). “We have seen a viewership surge. Morning viewing time is getting extended into the afternoon. It is also about fresh content. Unlike general entertainment channels (GEC) and sports, news is the only category that can generate fresh content under lockdown,” says MK Anand, MD, Times Network. (It is owned by Times Group, which publishes this newspaper.) GEC saw only a marginal growth of 7%.There are two possible reasons for this. One is obvious — little availability of fresh content in a lockdown. The second reason is interesting and could offer some clues into how the battle for remote control is shaping up within homes, says Desai. Women, who are a dominant chunk of GEC viewers, may have had to re-prioritise their access to TV amid household chores and stiff competition from kids and men. Interestingly, sports channels that saw a sharp dip, with the cancellation of live sporting events, have witnessed a spike with the live-streaming of WrestleMania and reruns of Indo-Pak cricket classics. 75509395Online SessionsKeep Classrooms Going Ashwini Kumar, 16 Student, Sitamarhi, Bihar LOCKDOWN SWITCH: He’s in Class 10; his tuition teacher now conducts virtual sessions & tests “My studies had stopped totally. My tuition teacher now sends notes & tests via WhatsApp. It helps”Smartphone View Multiple sources offer insights into smartphone usage in India. “The biggest thing that struck me is how both men and women have taken to digital news at every level of socio-economic strata in metros and non-metros,” says Dolly Jha, country head, Nielsen India. It has been tough for family oriented Indians to practise social distancing. Forced to cut off physical connections, they are making up in the virtual world. “The share of time Indians spent on calling and chatting is 29% as against 12% in the US,” says Jha.Covid-19 is on everyone’s mind. More than 1 in every 10 respondents used the government’s Aarogya Setu app in the first week of its launch. Also, 40% of Google’s top 100 searches are related to Covid-19, says Nielsen. Time spent on chat and VoIP (19% on average, with women hitting higher at 22%) leads smartphone usage, followed by social networking (15%), video-streaming (14%) and gaming (9% on average, while 15-21-year-olds spend 11% of their time). Santanu Basu, founder, Let’s Game Now, an esports platform, has seen the user base of gamers surge from 17,000 pre-lockdown to 50,000 now. Based on data from SimilarWeb, WhatsApp, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook and You-Tube are the most popular apps in India. During the lockdown, downloads of almost all these apps have remained stable or dipped, except for TikTok, which saw a big rise. “The sweaty energy that TikTok exudes is a good representative of what is happening in the society at large,” says Desai. He says the depth and breadth of content in TikTok around Covid-19 is far richer than that in other platforms. 75510080YouTube search trends echo some of these shifts. News, gaming, at-home workouts and recipe searches for dishes like panipuri saw a big spurt, says Kaushik Das Gupta, group head, insights and partnerships, Google India. OTT player MX Player (owned by Times Group, which publishes this newspaper), which launched seven shows in March, has seen time spent on its platform jump 2.5 times as compared with pre-lockdown days. “Our offering of Hollywood films like Baywatch and Transformers, dubbed in Hindi, is doing well,” says Karan Bedi, CEO, MX Player. Snehil Khanor, cofounder of dating platform TrulyMadly, has seen the number of active users, their engagement and time spent rise even as peak activity time has got extended. 75510093 75510129Beyond the LockdownWhenever the world resets to normalcy, many of these shifts might prove to have been transient. But some could stick or accelerate trends that were already afoot. OTT viewing is one of them. Virtually, all major streaming platforms have witnessed a jump in user base. Some of those users may not log out after the lockdown.Similarly, digital transactions have witnessed interesting shifts. A recent report by Razorpay, a fintech company, based on pre-lockdown and lockdown transactions, shows that payments for utilities, IT & software, and media & entertainment saw a growth of 73%, 32% and 25%, respectively, even as sectors such as travel dipped by 87%. "Demonetisation was a short-term event. Lockdown will lead to long-term shifts. Behavioural change will be a lot stickier," says Razorpay cofounder Harshil Mathur.Indians are also waking up to the convenience of virtual workout coaches. Universal Music MD Devraj Sanyal has used the lockdown period to focus on his physical and mental well-being, spending two hours daily shuffling between fitness regimens. "Those two hours, I think of nothing else. It's a great way to de-stress in these difficult times. I am 100% sure some of it will stay post-lockdown," he says.

from Economic Times https://ift.tt/2KWMISE