Every year the Independence Day and the Republic Day have their individual distinct formats. While there are the Armed Forces parades as well as different states having gala dances and 'cultural floats' on the Republic Day, Independence Day is a shorter affair with the central event being the Prime Minister's address. We set out to check out the viewership habits on these two days for the current year.

 

The DD1 airing of Republic Day event this year, against the backdrop of the violent attacks on the Indian Parliament on December 13th ranked 6th. The Peak Quarter Hour TVRs for the Republic Day event clocked 4.08 (All Individuals, 4years+, Top 6 Metros). The same for the Independence Day was 2.84. However, the rank for the DD1 airing was a much lower 32nd.

Let's have a look at how each state watched the Independence Day Ceremony this year. The matrix shows how reach and time spent per viewer, for the live telecast of the Independence Day Celebrations varied across different markets.

 

As evident from the chart above… Delhi was the Metro clocking the highest Time Spent and highest Reach (People who tuned in at the time of the telecast). Mumbai and Calcutta had the same time spent though Mumbai had more number of people tuning into the program. But it were the large towns North and Central India (with populations of more than 1 Mn in Punjab/ Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh) that had both - a high Time Spent as well as Reach!

The other key question that comes in automatically is that how do the viewerships on Independence Day compare to any other holiday viewerships… say a Sunday.

We at TAM have compared the viewership for various channel genres on the Independence Day for the last and this year with that of an average Sunday viewership and find that Independence Day viewerships are quite distinct and

a typical vis-à-vis Sunday viewerships. Mass Channels & Hindi Movie Channels display higher viewership on Independence Day versus Regionals that lose out.

An Adex India Team Analysis