Q55Comprehension2 Marks31 Aug 2025
Passage
Read the following industrial report on Indian cinema audience habits and answer the sub-questions that follow:
More Than 157 Million Indians Bought 913 Million Movie Tickets in 2023
More than 157 million Indians watched at least one film in the theatre in 2023. This theatre-going population [1] _________ over the 122 million in 2022. More importantly, it is an 8 percent growth from the pre-pandemic (January to March 2020) [2] _________. These [3] _________ bought 913 million tickets. That means they saw [4] _________ films in the year. That number changes depending on the language. Telugu-speaking audiences are [5] _________; they beat the average with over 9 films a year. Tamil comes [i] ________, and Punjabi is at number three with an average of 5 films a year. Among others are some of the findings of 'Sizing The Cinema: 2024', a report from Mumbai-based analytics firm Ormax Media. In its third year of publication, the report is based on research conducted in January 2024 [ii] ________, across urban and rural India. The last Indian Readership Survey in 2019 puts the theatre-going audience at 33 million, so this seems like a large jump. Can a sample-based report be accurate? Shailesh Kapoor, founder and CEO, Ormax Media, points to the only available metrics—the actual ticket sales (943 million) and box-office revenue (Rs. 12,226 crore). The report is totally [iii] ________, and has been so for three years, he says. Note that the films earned a total revenue of Rs. 19,700 crore in 2023—this included domestic and overseas theatrical, music, TV and streaming rights. Analysts point out that television is watched regularly by 900 million people. More than 510 million people surf the net daily for videos and films. If anything, the reach numbers for cinema seem low for a film-crazy country with [iv] ________. "It (the reach of cinema) is only 11 percent of the country's population," says Kapoor. Note that the reach number will be way higher if you factor in the fact that [v] ________ spent watching TV is spent on film or that a large proportion of OTT viewing is cinema. These are not factored in by the Ormax report. Even without that, the rise in the overall numbers is impressive, say analysts.
Excerpted from: Kohli-Khandekar, Vanita. "More Than 157 Million Indians Bought 913 Million Movie Tickets in 2023." Business Standard, Mumbai, 24 Apr 2024, p. 2.
From Table 1 Column B, choose the most appropriate phrase to fill blank [3] in Column A:
These _________ bought 913 million tickets.