We see a considerable recovery in adex in this financial year: Bhuwan Bhatt

Adgully is back with a new edition of its annual feature – TRENDING NOW – where we present the strategies and views of a cross-section of industry leaders as they go about reclaiming lost time and market opportunities and build for a stronger future, armed with the lessons of the pandemic period.

Over the last few weeks, Trending Now has been bringing insights from industry leaders on how their organisations are geared to seize the opportunities in 2022, break through the Covid disruptions and find growth and remain resilient.

In conversation with Adgully, Bhuwan Bhatt, Chief Business Officer, News Nation Network, on the trends in the new sector, how viewers are moving away from sensational news content. At the same time he expresses concern over the news viewership base remaining below the threshold level. He is, however, optimistic about the news genre making a significant recovery in the post-pandemic era.

What are the trends that you expect to dominate in your sector in 2022?

News is always dominated by the content that is non-opinionated and unbiased, which matters to larger sections of the society, which is why News Nation has a brand promise AGENDA NAHI, SIRF KHABAR. At News Nation, we focus on new concepts of delivering quality news with speed and accuracy, be it international news overage like on ground reporting from Ukraine or domestic news reporting like of Delhi riots. Viewers nowadays dislike sensational news content and same is the case with advertisers, they go with the content they like the most. Media analysts/ clients always take a holistic view before finalising their media spends.

What are the challenges and new opportunities that you see emerging in the year ahead?

One of the biggest challenges for the news genre is its viewership base, which has remained below the threshold level. Entry of new channels has not been able to expand the viewership base other than in the COVID lockdown phase. Secondly, there are few players who are totally driven by a couple of their tentpole properties and fo not have uniformity; minus the affinity for some slots, their viewership falls drastically.

Digital consumption of news is sure going to increase in the near future and presents a very lucrative opportunity, hence at News Nation we focus on digital first. TV news for long has been viewed as a one-way communication, but News Nation’s differentiation is our ability to connect both ways through audience participation and engagement in real time.

How is this year’s turnout expected to be in this sector as compared to the last two years? How strong will the recovery be? What are the changes that have happened in this sector in the last two years? How strong will this sector’s growth be compared to the last two years as well as the pre-Covid period?

Business in the last two years has been severely impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, however the economy has substantially opened, and we see significant signs of recovery. Complete recovery will take some time due to the dynamics of global economy impacted by the Russia-Ukraine war, rising crude prices, etc. Moreover, the industry now has measurement currency in the form of BARC ratings, which had not been available for past 16 months, therefore considering all aspects, we see a considerable recovery in adex in this financial year.