BENGALURU: Star India’s Hindi Sports channel Star Sports 1 Hindi topped the Broadcast Audience Research Council of India’s (BARC) weekly list of top-10 channels across genres in week 17 of 2018 (Saturday, 21 April 2018 to Friday, 27 April 2018), replacing Sun TV Network’s flagship Tamil GEC Sun TV. Star Sports 1 Hindi is one of the 10 Star India channels that air the Indian mega cricketing bonanza. IPL 11 is broadcast live in six languages—English, Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Bengali.

Seven Hindi GECs and one channel each from Hindi sports, Tamil GECs and Hindi Movies made up the top-10 channels across-genre list for week 17 of 2018. Hence, Sun TV was the lone non-Hindi channel on the list. From the networks’ perspective, four channels from Star India, two channels each from Sony Pictures Network India (SPN) and Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd (Zeel) and one channel each from Viacom 18 and the Sun TV Network were on the list.

Star Sports 1 Hindi topped the list in week 17 with 985.930 million weekly impressions during the week under review as compared with 949.032 million weekly impressions in the preceding week. Star Sport 1 Hindi also topped BARC’s weekly list of top-five sports channels. All the top-five sports programmes in week 17 of 2018 were aired on Star Sports 1 Hindi. The match involving two IPL teams from the south—Mahindra Singh Dhoni-led Chennai Super Kings (CSK) and Virat Kohli-led Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB)—was the top programme with ranking based on average rating across all airings (original and repeat) during the week under review.

Sun TV was second in week 17 of 2018 with a huge drop in ratings (13.7 per cent drop) to 890.534 million weekly impressions as against 1,032.408 million weekly impressions in week 16. Sun TV was the most-watched Tamil channel in BARC’s list of top-five Tamil channels in the Tamil Nadu (TN) and Puducherry markets and all the top-five Tamil programmes in these markets were beamed on Sun TV.

Retaining its third rank in the list in week 17 of 2018 was Zeel’s free-to-air (FTA) Hindi GEC Zee Anmol with 774.763 million weekly impressions as compared with 717.079 million impressions in week 16. Zee Anmol also topped BARC’s weekly list of top-10 Hindi GECs in the Hindi-speaking urban and rural or HSM—(U+R) and in HSM (R). Zee Anmol was ranked ninth in HSM (U). Balaji Telefilms-produced family drama Kumkum Bhagya, which airs on Zee Anmol, was the second most-watched show during prime time in HSM (U+R) and was the most-watched show on HSM (R). Two other shows, Ganga and Mahek that were also aired on Zee Anmol, were the third and fourth most-watched shows during prime time in HSM (R).

Climbing up a rank in week 17 of 2018 was Viacom18 FTA Hindi GEC Rishtey with 677.772 million impressions as compared with 631.658 million impressions in week 16. Rishtey was ranked second in BARC’s list of top-10 Hindi GECs in HSM (U+R) and HSM (R) while it was ranked eighth in HSM (U).

Dropping down a rank to fifth place in BARC’s across-genre list was Star India’s FTA Hindi GEC Star Bharat. The channel gained 1.2 per cent ratings in week 17 of 2018 to reach 664.618 million impressions as against 637.080 million impressions in week 16. Star Bharat was ranked third in BARC’s weekly list of top-10 Hindi GECs in HSM (U+R) and HSM (U) and was ranked fifth in HSM (R). Daily soap Jiji Maa, which was aired on Star Bharat, was the fifth most-watched Hindi GEC programme during prime time in HSM (U+R).

Also retaining its previous week’s rank of sixth in week 17 of 2018 was SPN’s women focused Hindi GEC Sony Pal. The channel had 610.822 million impressions in week 17 as compared with 606.067 million weekly impressions in week 16 of 2018. Sony Pal was ranked fourth in BARC’s list of top 10 Hindi GECs’ in HSM (U+R), third in HSM (R) and was ranked seventh in HSM (U). Two Sony Pal programmes—Tarak Mehta ka Ooltah Chashma and Baalveer—were ranked as the second and fifth-most watched Hindi GEC programmes during prime time, respectively, in HSM (R).

Zeel’s flagship Hindi GEC Zee TV was ranked seventh in week 17 of 2018 with a huge 14.1 per cent increase in ratings to 609.069 million weekly impressions (533.901 million impressions in week 16). The channel was also ranked seventh in week 16. Zee TV was the fifth and sixth most-watched Hindi GEC in BARC’s list of top-10 Hindi GECs in HSM (U+R) and HSM (R), respectively. Zee TV was the most-watched Hindi GEC in HSM (U). Three shows aired on Zee TV—Kundali Bhagya, a spinoff of Kumkum Bhagya, Ishq Subhan Allah and Kumkum Bhagya—were ranked first, third and fourth watched Hindi GEC programmes during prime time, respectively, in HSM (U+R). The shows were also the first, second and third most-watched Hindi GEC programmes during prime time in HSM (U).

Another Star India FTA Hindi GEC, Star Utsav, was ranked eighth in BARC’s list of top 10 channels across genres in week 17, the same rank as in week 16. Star Bharat lost 2 per cent in ratings in week 17 at 522.110 million impressions as compared with the previous week’s 532.947 million weekly impressions. Star Utsav was ranked sixth in BARC’s weekly list of top-10 Hindi GECs in HSM (U+R), fourth in HSM (R) and tenth in HSM (U) in week 17 of 2018.

Re-entering BARC’s list of top-10 channels across genres in week 17 was SPN’s Hindi Movies channel Sony Max. The channel garnered 519.052 million weekly impressions during the week under review. Sony Max was the most watched Hindi Movies channel inn HSM (U+R) and HSM (U) and was ranked fifth in BARC’s list of top 5 Hindi Movies channels in HSM (R). Hindi feature films (HFF) Bahubali: The Beginning and Kanchana 2 were among the top-five most-watched Hindi movie programmes during prime time in HSM (U+R) and HSM (U). Hindi-dubbed feature film Son of Satyamurthy, which aired on Sony Max, was the fourth most-watched Hindi movie programme during prime time in HSM (U). Bahubali: The Beginning was also the fifth most-watched Hindi movie programme during prime time in HSM (R).

Star India’s flagship Hindi GEC Star Plus also re-entered the across genres list in week 17 of 2018 at tenth rank with 484.387 million weekly impressions. Star Plus was ranked seventh in HSM (U+R); ninth in HSM (R) and second in HSM (U) in week 17 of 2018.

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