NEW DELHI: News channel Aaj Tak is going from strength to strength. Recently it won the award for Best News Channel at the Indian Telly Awards. Now it says that the top ten programmes in the news genre belong to its stable. Not only has the channel garnered the highest audience share in news, it claims to have set new standards in all areas of news broadcasting, be it editorial content or impressive presentation.
TAM data 4 weeks (week ending 9th Nov) states that Seedhi Baat & Cinema Aaj Tak also figure prominently on this chart even after completing more than 52 episodes, bringing out the fact that they are still successful in sustaining viewers interest. The stickiness index for Aaj Tak is 43 per cent whereas for Zee News & Star News it stands at 33 per cent & 19 per cent respectively.
The latest addition to the Aaj Tak programming schedule has been the induction of Metro morning. The initial reports about this programme are very encouraging, and it is all set to replicate the success of the evening show. Before this, Aaj Tak had launched a slew of programmes in the Sunday slots.
In an official release, the channel has attrbuted very healthy ratings to content which is different from the normal programming fared out by the rest of the news channels. Aaj Tak lays emphasis on News that you can use.
The channel has also fared well with the advertising community. VP Universal McCann Rajul Kulshreshtha said: "Aaj Tak in the past few months has achieved unqualified success and has also been able to carve a distinct niche for itself in the world of news. All brands that have advertised on Aaj Tak have benefitted. Apart from providing a reach that is significant, the channel has also been able to deliver quality audiences."
Aaj Tak, which is all set to launch a sister English channel early next year has also got into high gear on the encryption front with the talk in industry circles being that from 1 January it will be available as a pay feed.
It has been building up a distribution sales team for that purpose, with industry sources reporting some recent poachings as well.
Aaj Tak seems to have followed the lead provided by B4U (and Discovery before it) in the matter and has apparently decided that it can sell its two channels in a more focussed fashion if it goes it alone rather than tag onto any network.
