As Karnataka gears up for its legislative polls on May 10, news channels are in full swing to grab the audience’s attention. With this election being considered as a roadmap for the Lok Sabha elections in 2024, experts are certain that there will be a jump in viewership and ad spends for TV channels.

Saraswathi Anand, AVP-Marketing, Network18, says: “The election is being watched with a lot of anticipation since it has been termed as a gateway to the elections in Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh, set to take place later in the year. It's kind of being used as a barometer for what will happen in the 2024 general elections, given that it's also a state where the two national parties are decently strong. There is a lot of drama happening too. While we have two national parties, there is also a regional party. And we have a lot of defections. All of this together is drawing significant viewer interest.”

Vinay Sheshagiri, Director at Kannada news channel Vistara News, agrees there will be a major spike in viewership due to the elections. “Brands will spend higher, so we estimate the growth to be at least 20-30% for advertising spends.”

Sharing inputs on viewership, Dinesh Rathore, CEO, Madison Media, said the counting day viewership is bound to see a spike. “For Hindi national channels, the channel share could go up to 25% to 30% and for regional Kannada channels the spike could be twice."

Speaking about investments for the election coverage, Rathore says, "Anyone doing a campaign will definitely want to use new channels. So, there may be a spike in investment as well."

Industry observers opine that "counting day could see double the rise in ad spends for news channels, unlike the other days of the election".

Karan Taurani of Elara Capital also believes that there is going to be a major rise in viewer interest for news channels this election. “I think news is one genre, which has always stood out as far as ad spending is concerned because news and sports are the two categories that have shown resilience. As far as election spends is concerned, there is always a fillip during an election year. I think in the case of Karnataka elections that is slightly higher. Compared to the rest of India, the South market has a stronger consumption pattern, higher time spent or penetration and number of linear TV households.”

So, I think bases that, South is one market, which has actually not moved towards digital in a very big way. I think TV is gonna stand out here as far as ad spends are concerned on news channels during election times, and you could see increase in terms of incremental growth rate anywhere in the range of 4 to 5 percentage points higher as compared to the overall average growth rate that the company or news channel would be doing in terms of your ad revenue. So, definitely, you know, this is some sort of attraction which is there.”

Sharing the strategy adopted by news channels, Saraswathi Anand says, “Given that this has been so hard fought with a lot of national leaders coming in, the news channels have also kind of upped the ante with making very interesting programs, to kind of make it viewer friendly. It's not just the kind of public discourse that's happening. I think it's almost a matching the decibels of cricket matches that are usually what the viewers watch. So that's how politics has become and, of course, counting days are nerve-racking with a lot of experts coming in. So, we have invested heavily and we have made it very, very interesting programming.”