Dissecting South content consumption on YouTube in Q1 of 2019

Regional content creators have gained huge following on the YouTube over the last few years. More and more viewers are moving towards this unconventional source of entertainment due to its easy accessibility. The viewers are more affiliated towards their regional language and the content creators have been smart to create content that appeals to the viewers.

As the viewers look for different types of content on YouTube, it is important to categorise the channels and then analyse them. Vidooly, in its latest report, has captured insights from the regional channels in four South Indian languages – Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil and Telugu.

Kannada

Sri Ganesh Videos has been the most popular movie channel in Kannada. It has the most lifetime views at 311.01 million; most lifetime subscribers at 751.710K; and also the highest views in January, February and March 2019 at 42.76 million.

DBeats Music World has been the most popular music channel in Kannada in all the 3 parameters, with the channel recording 102.79 million views in the first 3 months of 2019.

Rekha Aduge has been the leading content creator in the Food category for quite some time now as reflected in the number of subscribers (445.368k) and lifetime views (75.76 million), while Lakshmi Paakshaale has picked up pace over the last quarter, garnering 10.33 million views.

Infobells Kannada has been the favourite channel for kids, occupying almost 74 per cent of the viewership of kids; channels in Kannada.

Namma Karunadu has been the go-to channel for film news in Kannada, claiming a viewership of 18.90 million in the first 3 months of 2019.

TV9 Kannada (111.29 million views), Public TV (105.8 million) and Suvarna News 24*7 (92.77 million) are the top 3 channels for traditional news in Kannada with little to separate between them in terms of viewership.

New age news channels have been quite unpredictable with different top channels across the three categories, with FirstNews Kannada having a huge lead in the last quarter’s viewership (78.20 million).

Telugu

Volga Video (342.62 million views) is the most popular movie channel in Telugu, while Sri Balaji Movies (328.35 million views) is a close second on the list.

Aditya Music (436.85 million views) is the most popular music channel in Telugu, followed by Lahari Music (431.66 million views), which has almost caught up with Aditya Music in terms of the number of views in the last quarter.

Myna Street Food (16.15 million views) has been the most popular food channel in Telugu for quite some time now.

Infobells Telugu has been the favourite channel for kids in Telugu with close to 85 per cent of the viewership, garnering 295.74 million views in the first 3 months of 2019.

Telugu Filmnagar has been the most popular film news channel in Telugu with over 70 per cent of the viewership, garnering 143.83 million views in the first quarter of 2019.

V6 New Telugu has the most number of lifetime views in traditional news category in Telugu at 2495.55 million, but TV9 Telugu has more views in the last quarter at 165.16 million.

Omfut (55.67 million views) has a very comfortable lead in the new age news category over other similar channels in Telugu.

Tamil

Lyca Productions (43.15 million views) is the most popular movie channel in Tamil, while Tamil Movies (28.66 million views) and Movie World Tamil (28.45 million views) are quite popular too.

Sony Music South Vevo has been the most popular music channel in Tamil across all the 3 parameters, garnering 374.61 million views in the first 3 months of 2019.

Pebbes Tamil has been the most popular food channel in Tamil, recording 16.35 million views in the last quarter.

Chellame Chellam has been the favourite channel for kids in Tamil, but at 810.921K, it has less subscribers than MagixBox Tamil Stories Kids Channel (922.050K subscribers). However, in the first 3 months of 2019, Infobells Tamil surpassed all to claim a lion’s share of the kids’ market at 179.10 million views.

Bingoo Box has been the leading channel in film news over the last quarter with 19.30 million views, but it still has a lot to do to catch up with South FDFS in terms of lifetime views and subscribers, in which it currently stands fourth on the list.

Puthiyathalaimurai (117.22 million views) has been the leading channel in traditional news across the 3 parameters, Polimer News gained pace in the last quarter, garnering 112.67 million views.

NewsGlitz (501.93 million) is the most viewed channel in new age category, but TamilCrowd has attracted most subscribers (1.71 million).

Malayalam

Millemium Cinemas has been the most popular movie channel in Malayalam with about 68 per cent of the viewership, garnering lifetime views of 126.82 million and 9.77 million views in the first 3 months of 2019.

Satyam Videos is the most popular music channel across all the 3 categories I Malayalam, garnering 46.70 million views in the last quarter.

Help Me Lord (90.77 million lifetime views) and Salu Kitchen (89.02 million lifetime views) have been the top 2 channels with little to separate in among the Malayalam food channels, but Salu Kitchen has narrowed down the gap with the leader Help Me Lord in the last quarter viewership.

Manjadi has been the favourite kids’ channel in Malayalam for some time now, with the channel garnering 33.47 million views in the first 3 months of 2019.

Manorama News (93.60 million views) has been the leading channel in traditional news over the last quarter, but it still has a lot to do to catch up with Asianet News in terms of lifetime views (1146.02 million) and subscribers (2564.930k).

Marunadan TV has a comfortable lead over other channels in news age news category, with the channel garnering 102.58 million views in the last quarter.

Methodology

For this report, Vidooly categorised the YouTube regional channels into 7 categories:

a) Movie Channels
b) Music Channels
c) Food Channels
d) Kids Channels
e) Film News Channels
f) Traditional News Channels
g) New Age News Channels

Top 5 channels of each language for that particular category for each of the following 3 parameters:

Lifetime Views
Lifetime Subscribers
Sum of views for the first 3 months of 2019 were considered while formulating this report

This report includes data fetched from the software developed by Vidooly Media Tech.