News viewership up in Week 33 on back of Kerala Floods, Vajpayee's demise

The 33rd week of 2018 was quite unfortunate for the country that witnessed the century’s worst floods in Kerala and former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s demise, and people flocked to the news channels, resulting in a steep rise in the viewership of the news genre, shows BARC India data.

Looking at the Hindi news genre, each of the top three players grew by about 44-47% from the average of the past four weeks to Week 33. The overall average growth of the genre should be in the range of 30-35% range. Aaj Tak clocked 214,534 Impressions ('000s), a 44% increase from the average of last four weeks, which stayed at 149,036 Impressions ('000s).

Zee News garnered 149,055 Impressions ('000s), up from an average of 102,794 Impressions ('000s), a 45% increase.

ABP News gained 148,073 Impressions ('000s), a 47% increase from the average 100,774 Impressions ('000s).

India TV got 122,864 Impressions ('000s), with a 12% jump, followed by News18 India, which clocked 113,025 Impressions ('000s) with a 14% rise over the last four week.

As for the English news genre, the top five channels witnessed a growth of about 40-70% each, in Week 33. Republic TV clocked a 70% growth by grabbing 1,499 Impressions ('000s), up from a four week average of 883 Impressions ('000s) garnered from Weeks 29-32.

Times Now has shown a 56% increase garnering 1,269 Impressions ('000s) in Week 33, while CNN News18 got 943 Impressions ('000s), registering a growth of 223%, up from an average of 223 Impressions ('000s).

India Today Television had shown a 66% growth from an average of 315 Impressions ('000s) to 523 Impressions ('000s) in Week 33.

NDTV 24x7 witnessed a growth of 38%.

State focus

In addition, the Malayalam news channels obviously went aggressive on the Kerala floods right from the start while the English and Hindi news channels latched on to the demise of the former Prime Minister and other issues.

As a result, with 214.1 million Impressions in Week 32 (August 4-10), the Malayalam News genre peaked in 2018. The genre saw a 98% growth in the week compared to the average of the previous four weeks.

While Asianet News stood at the top with 36% of the total news viewership, Manorama News, Media One TV, People TV and News 18 Kerala gained more than two times the average ratings of its previous four weeks.

This is the second highest viewership peak recorded for the Malayalam news genre since BARC India started measuring TV viewership. The highest so far was 215.1 million Impressions generated on the back of coverage of molestation case filed against a leading actor in the Malayalam Film industry.

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