MUMBAI: Week 18 of TAM Media Research's weekly TV ratings monitor turned up a surprise for Turner International India which runs the kids channels Pogo and Cartoon Network.
Pogo notched up 183 GRPs (4-14 all C&S homes), the highest GRPs for any kids channels in the past seven years. Cartoon Network (CN) on its part also reported high GRPs of 134 placing it at the number 2 spot. They also grabbed a combined near 50 per cent of the viewership share of the kids channel genre - Pogo had a share of 28.7 per cent and Cartoon Network of 21.1 per cent. This data was provided to indiantelevision.com by a channel.
What happened? What got it those unexpected numbers at a time of an intense focus on cricket courtesy the IPL and when the GEC genre has been losing ratings and viewer share?
"The kids genre on the whole did really well in week 18. The summer vacations are on and kids are home from school," explains Turner senior director & head of kids vertical south Asia Krishna Desai. "Also, Chota Bheem did very well for us on Pogo. We had Chota Bheem's birthday celebrations in week18 which ran through the week like previous years. On 1 May, we premiered the movie 'Chota Bheem and The Crown of Valhalla' which also contributed to the record setting GRPs."
"Kids like to watch marathons of two to three of their favourite shows. Increasing the frequency of these shows leads to higher viewership for the channel," adds Turner vice president ad sales south Asia Juhi Ravindranath.
Juhi says the high viewership despite, the kids channel genre and pricing for it needs to be looked at with a different set of eyeglasses.
"The kids channel genre accounts for approximately six per cent of overall viewership (CS 4+ All India). In terms of revenue share, it is around 2.5 to three per cent," she highlights. "So yes, it is definitely underpriced as a genre. If one looks at the past few weeks' data, Pogo and CN are ranked at number 11 and number 12 respectively in terms of viewership amongst all channels. Unfortunately the rates commanded by the genre are not at par. However, year on year, there is growth in effective rates for the genre. We are, however, pushing for very aggressive rate hikes this year and are seeing success."
She says her team is increasingly getting aggressive on bringing in non-traditional advertisers to hoick revenues. "While kids form the core audience, any household with kids would also see substantial viewership coming from parents. For example, Pogo and Cartoon Network would be ahead of most news channels in the male 15+ target group. Categories like computers, telecom and other durables are forming areas of growth for us. Apart from this, we are actively using non-FCT areas like licensing of our characters, vignettes, on-ground events and our online websites to help us drive revenues."
Will week 19 of TAM's ratings see Pogo and CN maintaining the tempo? Desai says the team is gung-ho about this. "We put in our best, however, we leave to the kids' audience the rest," he ends with a smile.
