If you thought that Star Plus is only watched by the Saas and Bahus and the women in the family, you could be mistaken.
Well, there is a percentage of kids for whom 'Star Plus' figures as one of their favourite channels.
While Cartoon Network definitely is the first choice among both boys and girls with 46 per cent of them favouring it, it is followed by Star Plus with numbers put at 22 per cent. Discovery channel comes a poor third with 5 per cent.
These are the findings of the research 'New Generations 2002' conducted in December 2002 by Cartoon Network in association with NFO.
A total of 3,218 kids in the age group of 7-14 years and their mothers, across 14 Indian cities were surveyed out of a total sample size of 6,436.
New Generations 2002 is a comprehensive and an in-depth study on Indian kids and the research seeks to gain insights on various aspects of their lives such as pocket money, media habits, values and attitudes, product consumption habits and pester power.
The top line finding with regard to media habits among children also revealed that during kid's prime time (4 pm to 8 pm), three quarters of the kids believe that they can choose the channel and programmes they want to watch on school days.
Irrespective of percentage of autonomy, television viewing among kids peaks between 4 pm and 8 pm during school and non-school days.
While Cartoons, sports and movies are the top favorite genres among boys and girls, sports show a strong preference among boys.
Duncan Morris, vice-president, Research, Turner International Asia-Pacific, said, "The top line findings on media habits of Indian kids and the cartoon characters that they like would certainly help our Cartoon Network channel. It will help us in programming our shows in such a way that we get maximum prime time viewership."
The survey findings on aspirations and career choices of kids show that conventional careers still top the charts with 34 per cent kids aspiring to become doctors, 21 per cent engineers or computer engineer and 11 per cent teachers.
While more girls want to be doctors (45 per cent), more boys (30 per cent) would like to become engineers or computer engineers. Being traditional and religious remains important to 84 per cent of the kids.
The research further goes on to show that a majority of kids - 69 per cent boys and 68 per cent girls - like advertisements that 'make them laugh.'
This is followed by ads that have nice music (45 per cent boys and 51 per cent girls) and ads that feature their favourite sports personality.
The preference for sports personality was strong among boys. As regards the ads, Coca-Cola, with 23 per cent, Colgate with 20 per cent and Pepsi with 15 per cent are the three favourite ads among kids.
Pester power is a category in which only the mothers were interviewed. Mothers were asked questions such as what is the degree of influence kids have on purchase of product categories.
They were also asked about kids influence on purchase of durables and the likelihood of taking kids along while shopping for durables.
Want to know the answers: 38 per cent said that their kids would accompany them to buy a television; 32 per cent said that their kids would accompany them to buy a car; 86 per cent said that their kid would accompany them to buy a kids bicycle and 77 per cent said their kid would accompany them to buy a wrist watch.
