Exit polls: How news channels fared on YouTube live viewership

In the run-up to the vote-counting day on March 10, exit polls aired across news channels and their social media platforms caught the attention of the Indians, amidst their full-blown interest in watching the coverage on Russia-Ukraine war for the last 12 days.

Soon after the polling ended officially, almost all news channels turned the spotlight back to India from Ukraine and initiated the planned telecast of exit polls on Tuesday from 6 pm onwards. 

Continuing with its analysis of the live concurrent viewers of traditional news channels on YouTube on special occasions for over 15 months in absence of BARC data, BestMediaInfo.com is bringing the latest analysis and leader board across Hindi and English news genres for the exit polls.

Hindi news

During the live telecast of the exit polls on Tuesday between 6-9 pm, Aaj Tak was the clear choice of digital viewers with all the feeds of the channel garnering over 2 lakh concurrent viewers per minute, on average. The channel aired the exit poll in partnership with Axis My India, which claims a strike rate of 48 correct predictions out of 52 exit polls conducted by it so far.

Zee News, which aired the exit poll in partnership with Designboxed, garnered over 1 lakh concurrent viewers per minute on average. 

Another original exit poll from Today’s Chanakya was telecast on News24 and garnered an impressive live viewership on YouTube. During the three hours of broadcast, the channel was able to hold the attention of over 76,000 concurrent live viewers per minute on an average.

Arnab Goswami owned Republic Bharat aired P-MARQ’s exit poll and garnered over 72,000 concurrent live viewers per minute on average.

ABP News-C-Voter exit poll garnered over 51,000 live concurrent viewers on YouTube for over three hours.

TV9 Bharatvarsh-Polstrat exit poll across all feeds of the channel fetched 44,000+ concurrent live viewers per minute on average.

The live concurrent viewers per minute on average for other channels were: India TV (41,000+); NDTV India (19,000+); News18 India (9,000+), Times Now Navbharat (2,000+) and News Nation (1,500+).

English news

On March 7, 2022, between 6-9 pm during the live telecast of exit polls, India Today-My Axis India recorded more than 18,000 concurrent live viewers per minute on average.

Wion’s focus remained on war coverage but it held significantly high live concurrent viewership of over 5,800 per minute on average when almost all other news channels were showing exit polls.

Republic TV’s exit poll coverage led by Arnab Goswami fell short of Wion and recorded 5,500+ concurrent live viewers per minute on average.

Times Now-Veto exit poll fetched 4,500+ concurrent live viewers per minute on average.

NDTV 24x7 and CNN-News18 recorded concurrent live viewership of 3,400+ and 1,300+ respectively.

Info@BestMediaInfo.com