CAA protests helped English News ratings spurt in weeks 51 and 52

BENGALURU: Anti and pro CAA protests helped bump up English News viewership in weeks 51 and 52 of 2019 as compared to the previous week according to Broadcast
Audience Research Council of India (BARC) weekly data. BARC data of top 5 English News channels for weeks 51 and 52 saw viewership jump 22.68 percent and 16.99 percent respectively for weeks 51 and 52 as compared to week 50 of 2019. Viewership of Top 5 English News channels in week 52 declined 4.63 percent as compared to week 51 of 2019.Combined viewership of top 5 English News channels in weeks 50, 51 and 52 was 1.883 million, 2.310 million and 2.203 million weekly impressions respectively.

Week 50 = Saturday, 7 December 2019 to Friday, 13 December 2019
Week 51 = Saturday, 14 December 2019 to Friday, 20 December 2019
Week 52 = Saturday, 21 December 2019 to Friday, 27 December 2019

It must be noted that (1) BARC released viewership data in the public domain for weeks 51 and 52 of 2019 on 3 January 2020 due to problems in collection of data from a number of states that faced protests for and against the CAA. Also BARC has reverted to an older method of considering data starting week 23 of 2019.

Please refer to the chart below for combined ratings of top 5 English News channels
between weeks 13 and 52 of 2019.

Ratings of top 5 English News channels

Please refer to the figure below for ratings of top 5 English News channels between weeks 13 and 52 of 2019. It must be noted that NDTV 24x7 was present for only week – week 51 of 2019 during the 40 week period in the figure below:

Week 51 saw the entry of Prannoy and Radhika Roy-run NDTV 24x7 in BARC’s weekly list of top 5 English News channels after a long hiatus at the cost of pub-caster’s English News channel DD India. However, NDTV 24x7 entry was short-lived – it exited BARC’s weekly list of top 5 English News channels in week 52 with the return of DD India. The other 4 channels in BARC’s weekly lists were same during the three weeks under consideration in this paper. Please refer to the figure below for the ranking of top 5 channels between weeks 13 and 52 of 2019.

As has been the norm in general, the Arnab Goswami-headed Republic TV was ranked one during all the three weeks under consideration. Republic TV scored 0.589 million,
0.806 million and 0.748 million weekly impressions in weeks 50, 51 and 52 respectively. Times Now was also ranked second during all the three weeks under consideration with 0.508 million, 0.618 million and 0.569 million weekly impressions in weeks 50, 51 and 52
of 2019.

In week 50, DD India was ranked third with 0.313 million weekly impressions. In weeks 51 and 52, it was the India Today Group’s India Today Television that was ranked third with 0.362 million and 0.371 million weekly impressions respectively. India Today Television was at rank 4 in week 50 with 0.265 million weekly impressions. As mentioned above, NDTV 24x7 entered the list in week 51 with 0.269 million weekly impressions, while in week 52 it was DD India at rank 4 with 0.291 million weekly impressions.

Network18’s CNN News18 was ranked fifth during all the three weeks under consideration. The channel scored 0.208 million, 0.255 million and 0.224 million weekly impressions in weeks 50, 51 and 52 of 2019 respectively.