MUMBAI: The Hindi general entertainment channels (GECs) have taken a knock from the cricket genre so as to shed 111 GRPs (gross rating points) in the Hindi speaking market for the week ended 28 August.
On an All-India basis, the genre share of the GECs has moved down from 30.8 per cent in the previous week to 28.8 per cent during the week, registering a 6.5 per cent fall in the overall television viewing pie.
Meanwhile, the sports channel genre has witnessed a major boost for the week, thanks to the India-Sri Lanka-New Zealand series. The cricket match on Saturday attracted huge audiences to Ten Sports and DD1, pushing up the Sports genre share to 4 per cent of the overall TV viewing pie. The genre saw almost a 74 per cent jump from the 2.3 per cent share that it had in the prior week.
Media observers, however, believe that the GECs have not seen any ratings fall but have rather come back to the base ratings after a week of spikes as a result of special programming.
"Star Plus, Colors and Sony Entertainment had specials lined up in the week before, which had propelled their ratings. The current week‘s ratings are without such special programmes," a media observer commented.
Star Plus, which shed the maximum (38 GRPs) points during the week, still remained at the top spot with 331 GRPs followed by Colors with 290 GRPs (a fall of 26 GRPs). Zee TV, again showing the strength of its stable base, sustained at the third spot with 235 GRPs, a fall of nine GRPs over that of the previous week‘s tally.
Sony Entertainment Television, which had aired the grand finale of Indian Idol 5 in the previous week and pocketed 29 GRPs from the event, shed 21 GRPs in the week and remained at number four with 182 GRPs.
Meanwhile, the other channel genres which saw growth were Hindi News - 4.3 per cent (from 4 per cent), music - 2.8 per cent (from 2.6 per cent) and cartoonanimation - 5.4 per cent (from 5.3 per cent). However, the Hindi movie genre saw a decline from a relative share of 10.3 per cent to 10 per cent while the English movie genre fell from 0.75 per cent to 0.68 per cent.
