Star Plus rides new high with 445 GRPs

MUMBAI: Surely it has basked in its magnificence for plenty - nine years of continued leadership at the top and then salvaging its lost glory from Viacom18‘s Colors after a year-long gap. But never has its achievements been such a historic feat since the first season of KBC.

Star Plus, now walking the path of a new self discovery with its rebranded look, has touched a new GRP high for the week ended 19 June with 445 points in its kitty. And to differentiate it further from the Hindi GEC gang, the channel has taken an exorbitant jump of 108 points in just one week to cross the 400 fence patch and break its own record since its KBC days.  
 

 
                                                                                                                Source: TAM 

What has primarily helped Star Plus to attain this huge jump is its weekend event, Star Parivaar Awards, that attracted 55 GRPs to the channel as it delivered a TVR of 7.2. The show achieved a peak TVR of 9.9 at 9.35 pm while the red carpet delivered 2.2 TVR (7:30 pm- 8 pm).

Said Star India EVP marketing and communications Anupam Vasudev, "Also, the new look of Star Plus has had huge sampling by new viewers while there has been an increased consumption from the existing viewers."

The other element that has helped Star Plus to upgrade its GRP grades is its weekday prime time. The band delivery saw a positive high wherein shows either registered a healthy and upward viewership over the previous week or maintained stability.
 
 
Pratigya (Monday-Friday 10.30 pm) is at 5.1 TVR (4.8), the highest average for the show since launch that continued to lead the slot. Bidaai (Monday-Friday 9 pm) has also moved up the TRP ladder to post an average TVR of 5 (3.6). Its one hour special on Saturday delivered 5.8 TVR.

Additionally, the newly launched Ekta Kapoor produced Tere Liye (Mon-Fri. 10 pm) seems to have given the channel an incremental push as the show opened with a 4 TVR on Monday and averaged 3.8 TVR.

"We want to lead in every primetime slot. Tere Liye performed extremely well for us and is a good bet to eventually lead the 10 pm slot. We are also launching the new show Chaand Chhupa Badal Mein at the 8 pm slot as it is a weak band right now," Vasudev said.

Star Plus had already begun experimenting on its programming content to understand the changing viewership patterns with shows like Bidayi and Yeh Rishta. "The shows fetched good eyeballs and the channel knew that "times are a changing". It led to bolder formats with Aap Ki Kachehri and Sach Ka Saamna and now, with the reinvention of self, Star Plus seems to have bounced back with the audiences well," says a top media executive on conditions of anonymity.

Fitting into the new image of the channel, Star chalked out an innovative strategy. The channel ran no commercial ads for 24 hours from Monday primetime but filled up the inventory with its own promos. "The exercise to promote ourselves during breaks began on Monday primetime and ran for 24 hours," said Vasudev.

While Star Plus seems to have marked a clear top slot territory for itself, vibrant Colors is evidently losing its bright tint. The channel has dropped 12 GRPs over the previous week to score 276 points.

Except Balika Vadhu that posted 4.8 TVR (4.7), the highest rating on the show in the last 12 weeks, the other primetime shows including Uttaran at 3.9 TVR (4.4) and Na Aana is Des Laado at 3.6 TVR (4.4) slid downward.

Where the channel has actually gained eyeballs is the afternoon slot (30 GRPs, up from 19 GRPs in the previous week) and weekend movies (24 GRPs, from the previous week‘s 14 GRPs).

Kitchen Champion, the one-hour afternoon cookery show, rated 1.8 TVR in its launch week. 
 
Clearly, apart from its primetime shows, movies have always been a dependable GRP delivery for Colors and it telecast six of them during the week (five on weekend and one on Friday). There were three movies on Sunday that played breakless - Ajab Prem… on Sunday at 7.30 pm delivered 1.5 TVR, Bhootnath on Sunday at 12 noon delivered 1.2 TVR and Welcome on Sunday at 5.30 pm rated 0.8 TVR.

Other movies on the channel were - Jab we met (Friday 9.30 pm 0.6 TVR), Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam (Sun 3.30 pm 0.6 TVR) and Life Partner (Saturday 2.30 pm 0.6 TVR).

There were also two event repeats on the channel with limited / no breaks - Maa Tujhe Pranam played breakless at Sunday 2 pm and delivered 1.1 TVR and Apsara Awards (Sunday 10 pm) played with 1 5 minutes break and delivered 1 TVR.

Zee TV also saw a drop of 25 GRPs (231 GRPs during the week) wherein the fall was primarily propelled by its weekday primetime bands. Its top rated show, Pavitra Rishta, fell to average 5.3 TVR (6.1 TVR) while Agle Janam is at 3.6 TVR (4.5 TVR). DID Lil Masters fetched an average TVR of 3.1 in the week (3.7 TVR last week). On the movie front too, the channel has lost 10 GRPs to lock it at just 5 points this week. The channel had shown Ishq at 4.30 pm on Saturday.

Overall, the channel genres which have grown this week are: Hindi GEC - 1374 GRPs (1338 GRPs), Sports - 187 GRPs (75 GRPs) and Hindi News - 147 GRPs (143 GRPs).

The genres which dropped are: Hindi movies - 439 GRPs (483), Youth - 121 GRPs (138) and Kids - 239 GRPs (290).