Indiantelevision.com Team

(26 August 2010 9:45 pm)

MUMBAI: The fifth season finale of Sony's flagship property Indian Idol has raised its bar to grab a fuller audience set than its fourth season.

According to Tam data for the week ended 21 August, the grand finale of the freshly-concluded and FremantleMedia India -produced Indian Idol-5 (Sunday 8 pm) has rated a TVR of 4 over 3.5 hours, quite above the fourth that had pocketed a mere TVR of 2.3.

The latest grand finale contributed 28.8 GRPs to the total channel grade, helping it earn an extra 12 point to end the week with a grade mark of 204. Also, along with its repeats, the contribution was 36 GRPs.

Pertinent to note here is that while the first season grand finale had generated tremendous eyeballs (14.3 TVR) in 2005, the show had gradually lost audience interest in the second palpably owing to its format-familiarity. The second season finale generated 4.5 TVR while the third season finale did perform better with 5.08 TVR.

Additionally, the reality show's latest season average TVR (2.04 TVR) has also fared better than the previous (1.9 TVR). It has, however, remained lower in the performance rate when compared to the first three. The average TVR for season two was 3.3 and that of the third was 3.4 TVR.

Talking about the grand finale, Sony business head Ajit Thakur said, "The finale was a good ending to a very good season. The talent on the show was quality and the show by itself created a lot of buzz. Also, the last week build-up to the finale helped generate greater eyeballs."

Adds FremantleMedia India MD SK Raj Barua, "Being our first production in India, we are happy with the ratings of Indian Idol 5. The show has done well because of its talent section and its performance will surely help us drive our other properties."

Meanwhile, CID continues to remain the top fiction property for Sony, adding 65 GRPs to the channel grade. As far as the other shows are concerned, the second season of Entertainment Ke Liye Kuch Bhi Karega (Monday-Thursday 9.30 pm and Friday 9 pm) opened with 2.8 TVR on Monday. The show averaged 2.3 TVR in the launch week.

Comedy Circus Ke Superstar (Sat 9 pm from this week) is at 2.8 TVR (2.7 TVR); the weekday half-hour strip (Mon-Thu 10.30 pm) averaged 0.8 (0.9) TVR while the weekend 1 hour biweekly episodes (Fri-Sat 11 pm) averaged 0.8 TVR (0.7).

About the overall Hindi GEC pie, both Star Plus (369 GRPs) and Colors (316 GRPs) have registered growth maintaining their number one and two positions respectively. Star Plus has seen a 29 GRP growth over last week. The day parts that grew are weekend original events (15 GRPs) and weekday primetime (13 GRPs).

Colors too has increased by 33 GRPs wherein the increase came in from weekend original (20 GRPs), week day primetime (6 GRPs), week day afternoon (3 GRPs) and weekend original events (8 GRPs).

However, both Colors and Star Plus have lost their numbers on movies misplacing 12 GRPs and 19 GRPs each.

Zee TV too, in its third spot, has upgraded its GRP mark from 231 points in the previous week to 245 points this week. The win for the channel is principally led by weekday prime (10 GRPs), weekday afternoon (3 GRPs), weekend original programming (3 GRPs) and, of course movies (14 GRPs), riding on the back of Love Aaj Kal (Sun 8 pm) that delivered 1.3 TVR.

Meanwhile, the channel genres which have grown this week are - Hindi GEC 1439 GRPs (1356 GRPs), Sports 83GRPs (66 GRPs), Marathi GEC 171GRPs (154 GRPs) and Hindi movies 469 GRPs (458 GRPS). The genre which has dropped is youth with 111 GRPs (113 GRPs).