BENGALURU: The ninth season of the Indian spin-off of the very popular Who Will Become a Millionaire under the Indian moniker Kaun Banega Crorepati or KBC commenced on Monday, 28 August 2017.

According to sources, this season has broken registration records of all previous seasons by registering 19.8 million citizens on the show. And,the viewership of the game show’s episodes over five days until Friday, 1 September 2017 was good enough to bring Sony Pictures Network’s flagship Hindi GEC Sony Entertainment Television (SET) into the top 10 channels across genre list for week 35 of 2017.

SET garnered ninth rank with 504.095 million weekly impressions Broadcast Audience Research Council of India (BARC) list for week 35 of 2017 (Saturday, 26 August 2017 to Friday, 1 September 2017) - Top 10 Channels Across Genre : All India (Urban+Rural or U+R) : 2+ Individuals. The channel had last appeared in the top 10 channels list across genres in week 11 of 2017 (Saturday, 11 May 2017 to Friday, 17 May 2017) at eighth place with 472.118 million weekly impressions.

KBC was the second most watched primetime programme in the Hindi GEC (U) markets in week 35 of 2017 with 6.253 million impressions according to BARC data for the top 5 Hindi GEC programmes in the Hindi Speaking Market (HSM) Urban NCCS All : Primetime (1800 - 2330 hrs) : 2+ Individuals.

Six Hindi GEC and two GEC channels each from the Tamil and Telugu markets made up the list of the top 10 channels across genres list in week 35 of 2017. A remarkable feature for week 35 of 2017 was the presence of four Star India channels in the top10 across genres list. Further, two channels each from the Sun TV Network and Zee Entertainment Enterprises Limited (Zeel) and one channel each from Network 18 (Viacom 18) and Sony Pictures Network India (SPN) made up the top 10 channels across genre list for week 35 of 2017.

The Sun TV Network’s flagship Tamil GEC Sun TV retained its pole position in the top 10 channels across genres list for week 35 of 2017 with 1,009.285 million weekly impressions. All five programmes in the top 5 Tamil programmes list for the TN/ Puducherry (Urban+Rural): NCCS All : Primetime (1800 - 2330 hrs) : 2+ Individuals in week 35 of 2017 were from Sun TV.

Sun TV was followed by Zeel’s FTA Hindi GEC Zee Anmol that also retained its week 34 position of second place in week 35 with 778.876 weekly impressions. The channel’s programmes Jamai Raja and Kaala Teeka were the ranked first and second respectively in the top 5 Hindi GEC programmes in the HSM (R) : NCCS All : Prime Time (1800 - 2330 hrs) : 2+ Individuals. Further Jamai Raja on Zee Anmol was also ranked third in week 35 during primetime in the HSM GEC (U+R) markets in week 35 of 2017.

Network 18’s flagship Hindi GEC Colors moved up one place to third rank in week 35 with 645.973 million impressions on the back of strong support from the HSM (U+R) and the HSM (U) markets during primetime for the eighth season of its reality and stunt television show Fear Factor Khatron Ke Khiladi. Zeel’s flagship Hindi GEC moved down one place to fourth place with 642.612 million impressions. Three of its shows – Kumkum Bhagya and its spinoff Kumkum Kundali and reality singing show Sa re ga ma pa Little Champs were present in the top 5 programmes list during primetime for HSM (U+R) and Kumkum Bhagya was present in the top 5 programmes list during primetime for HSM (U) for week 35 of 2017.

Star India’s flagship Hindi GEC Star Plus was placed fifth with 626.212 million weekly impressions followed by the Sun TV Networks flagship Telugu GEC Gemini with 538.077 million impressions. Star India’s flagship Telugu GEC Star Maa was ranked seventh with 531.41 million weekly impressions followed by Star India’s FTA Hindi GEC and newly christened Star Bharat with 531.083 million weekly impressions at eighth place.

As mentioned above SET was ranked ninth followed by Star India’s flagship Tamil GEC Star Vijay at tenth place with 486.959 million impressions.