NBF now seeks ad industry's help, says news broadcasters are doing public service

Just days after seeking Government’s intervention to overcome the larger economic, social, financial and business impact due to COVID-19 and lockdown impact, the News Broadcasters Federation (NBF) has now reached out to the advertising fraternity. The NBF has stated that news broadcasters are doing public service, and hence need the help of the entire advertising fraternity. 

In a statement issued, NBF pointed out, “This is an extraordinary time for the country, and the news broadcasters are leading the battle against COVID-19 from the front. News TV has emerged as the single greatest source of news and information at a critical time of the lockdown. Across India, broadcasters in all languages are doing non-stop programming with an almost 100 per cent focus on battling the Coronavirus and ensuring the success of the nationwide lockdown. Besides the news on the latest figures of corona infected and the degree of spread of the pandemic, news channels have put hundreds of experts, doctors, public health experts, civil and police personnel, and government officials on air in a massive effort to disseminate the right information and counter the barrage of fake news.” 

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President of the News Broadcasters Federation, Arnab Goswami, said, “At a time when other media can scale down resources and expenses, news broadcasters are scaling up their effort, and going all out to scale up their resources on the ground. We, the news broadcasters of India, consider ourselves as a public and emergency and essential service at a time of national crisis, and are absolutely committed to play our role in ensuring that by reaching out to the largest part of India’s 1.3 billion people, we stall the spread of this dangerous virus. I appeal at this time to all my friends in the media industry, and our partners in all sectors to contribute to the efforts of the news broadcasters by supporting news channels in terms of advertising on this period as a preferred partner in this difficult time." 

The NBF further pointed out that viewership trends in news channels have significantly risen, as per the latest report on trends put out jointly by BARC and Nielsen yesterday (March 27, 2020). As per the report, the viewing of news channels had gone up in last week by 57 per cent and Hindi news channels by 67 per cent. Regional language news channels are also seeing a major spike in viewership and the increase in viewership has been across segments. Interestingly, BARC CEO Sunil Lulla had pointed out during the press conference that even the kids’ category saw viewership jump in news channel consumption by a whopping 87 per cent, which is a clear indicator that the nature of informative and contextual news programming on battling COVID-19 among news channels is being received favourably across all segments of the TV audiences. 

The NBF acknowledged the support that news channels and its member channels have received so far, and assured the media industry and the industry stakeholders that the news broadcasters of India will work hard to bring the factual news to the people of India to strengthen the fight against COVID-19.