MUMBAI: It was not just newspapers that went to town on the Salman Khan-Aishwary Rai tapes scandal story broken yesterday by Hindustan Times to coincide with the launch of its Mumbai edition.

The Bollywood bad boy's latest controversy surrounding alleged links with the underworld gave a big boost to the share of Hindi news channels, which gave the story blanket coverage.

According to online television ratings system aMap, which tracked data for Mumbai city, the Hindi news genre grew 16 per cent on the day following increased viewer tune-ins. aMap states that over the last 10 Thursdays, Hindi news channels recorded an average 34.80 per cent reach in India's commercial capital, while yesterday it surged to 40.4 per cent.
    
aMap data for 14 July indicates that Sabse Tez - Aaj Tak managed to chalk up 18.4 per cent across all news channels. Followed by NDTV India, which secured net reach of 13.1 per cent. Zee News on the other hand recorded reach of 12.7 per cent. Star News managed to carve out 11.6 per cent reach, while Channel 7 was at 9.4 per cent.

Sahara Samay Mumbai recorded a reach of 8.6 per cent, while India TV recorded 6.8 per cent. Sahara Rashtriya , the national channel from the Sahara group listed a reach of 6.1 per cent, while the DD News recorded 2 per cent.

This clearly indicates that the viewership base increases when news channels deliver news that have juice and spice, besides high shock value.