BENGALURU: PubcasterDoordarshan’s English News channel DD India dropped to its lowest rank ever in week 34 of 2019 since Broadcast Audience Research Council of India (BARC) recommenced publishing viewership data in the public domain. Earlier, the ratings agency had stopped publishing data in the public domain starting week 6 of 2019 allow ratings to stabilize on implementation of Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) New Tariff Order. BARC restarted putting up data on its website in week 13 of 2019 on coercion from TRAI.
During the 22 weeks(including weeks 13 and 34 of 2019) since, DD India has been ranked first in BARC’s weekly list of top 5 English News channels four times, has been ranked second 6 times, has been ranked third ten times, and has been ranked fourth and fifth once each. Hence, DD India’s ranking in week 34 (Saturday, 17 August 2019 to Friday, 23 August 2019) has been its lowest ever in 22 weeks. Please refer to the figure below
All the five channels in BARC’s weekly lists of top 5 English News channels have been the same during the 22 weeks (weeks 13 to 34) under consideration in this paper, except that there has been a shuffling of ranks.
The combined weekly impressions of BARC’s top 5 English News channels dipped once again in week 34 of 2019 as compared to week 33. This time the week-on-week dip in ratings was even higher at 14.9 percent (0.379 million impressions) as compared to the dip of 11.7 percent (0.338 million weekly impressions) between weeks 33 and 32 of 2019.In week 34 of 2019, three channels – DD India (52.4 percent drop), CNN News18 (20.3 percent drop) and Times Now (9.5 percent drop) saw ratings fall. Two channel in BARC’s weekly list of top 5 English News channels in week 34 witnessed growth in ratings. They were Republic TV (increase of 0.048 million weekly impressions) and India Today TV (increase of 0.005 million weekly impressions) . Please refer to the figure below:
Let us see how the top 5 English News channels performed in week 34 of 2019
The Arnab Goswami led Republic TV retained its first rank with 0.762 million weekly impressions in week 34 of 2019 as compared to 0.714 million weekly impressions in week 33. Times Now climbed up a place to second rank in week 34 of 2019 with 0.498 million weekly impressions as compared to rank three and 0.550 million weekly impressions in the previous week. Climbing up two places to rank three in week 34 of 2019 was India Today Television with 0.321 million weekly impressions as compared to rank five and 0.321 million weekly impressions in week 33. Retaining its previous week’s rank four was CNN News18 with 0.315 million weekly impression in week 34 of 2019 as compared to 0.395 million weekly impressions in week 33. DD India completed the quintet with less than half of its week 33 viewership. At fifth rank,DD India garnered 0.272 million weekly impressions in week 34 of 2019 as compared to second rank and 0.572 million weekly impressions in week 33.
Please refer to the figure below:
