MUMBAI: Wednesday brought good news for Star Plus, the flagship Hindi entertainment channel from the Star India stable. TAM ratings for week 19 showed that it had managed to generate its highest GRPs level in 94 weeks (almost two years).
Star Plus has been involved in a battle for leadership with its two major rivals Colors and Zee TV. For a large part of this year, Colors has been at the forefront with both Zee TV and Star Plus sneaking ahead for a week or so.
But in the week ended 8 May it has taken a giant sized piece away from its rivals by generating GRPs of 337 (HSM C&S 4+), which is 59 points more than its nearest rival Colors.
Colors notched up 278 GRPs which means that it shed 10 points over its week 18 performance. Zee TV shaved off 12 GRPs to close at 267 and ended up at the No 3 spot.
Star Plus on the other hand gained 51 GRPs on the back of a strong weekend performance along with a healthy weekday afternoon band and its movie lineup.
Says a Star spokesperson, "While weekend original programming contributed 33 GRPs (13 in previous week) to the channel, movies attracted an additional 15 GRPs (4 in the previous week)."
Its movies on 2 May De Dhana Dhan and Aladin delivered 1.5 TVRs at 5:30 pm and 0.8 TVRs at 1 pm respectively. What worked well for the channel was its one hour weekend special for its Monday to Friday show Pratigya. The special racked up a 11 per cent growth for the show by generating 5.5 TVRs.
The channel has also garnered the number one spot in the weekday afternoon adding three GRPs to its last week performance of 30. Meanwhile, Colors and Zee remain stable at 17 GRPs each in the slot.
"While Colors is still to gain firm ground in the afternoon slot, Star is already firmly entrenched in that time band. Their strategy to shift their non-performing primetime shows to afternoon seems to have worked well for the channel," says a media observer.
Colors‘ GRPs drop was primarily led by weekend movies (29 GRPs as against 43 GRPs in the previous week), weekday primetime shows (119 GRPs vs 122 GRPs last week), and weekend original programming (11 GRPs vs 14 GRPs last week).
"Weekend movies have always helped Colors bulk up GRPs. This week too, the channel screened five movies. However, they failed to score for it," says a media observer.
The movies that the Colors aired showed include Munnabhai MBBS, Bhoot Unkle, Yeh Dil, Bhaghban and Toh Baat Pakki.
Chak Dhoom Dhoom (Fri-Sat 9:00 pm) too slid as it averaged three TVRs [3.7 last] in its second week.
Zee TV ruled the week in both fiction and non-fiction with its shows Pavitra Rishta (5.5 TVRs vs 5.4 last week) and DID Li‘l Champs (5.2 TVRs vs 6.6 last week) respectively scoring the highest GRPs amongst all GEC channels.
"DID Li‘l Champs average viewership fell leading to the GRPs fall. The movie lineup for the week was also weak," says a media analyst.
The movies on the channel this week included Dhol, Yaadein and Garam Masala.
Sony, the No 4 player (179 GRPs) will really have to take a hard look at its Yash Raj created content. The shows continued to sag with all of them raking up below 0.5 TRPs. Old hand CID contributed 72 GRPs while its new season of Indian Idol (Monday to Thursday 9 pm) was the star performer with 68 GRPs.
A peep at the performance of the other GECs: Imagine clocked 93 GRPs in the week (from earlier week‘s 104 GRPs), Sab 78 GRPs (80 GRPs last week) and Star One 34 GRPs (40 GRPs last week).
