BARC Wk 17: News genre’s share stabilises; 166% growth recorded

News and Movies genres continued to drive viewership growth for TV in Week 17 as well. The News genre recorded 166 per cent growth during the week, even as its share has started to stabilise. As per the 7^th edition of BARC-Nielsen’s report on ‘TV + Smartphone Consumption During Crisis’, 13 per cent of the viewers of the last 6 weeks had not watched news during the first 6 weeks of 2020. Rajasthan and Gujarat have the highest proportion of news viewers, while South India has lower percentage of news viewers than HSM.

Hindi News

As reported earlier, BARC India has made changes in the Target Groups for different TG cuts on the website. From Week 17 onwards, BARC India is releasing data on website and mobile with TG as 2+ for all genres and market as All India for English, Lifestyle and Infotainment genres.

Change has also been made for Hindi News – Rural [HSM (Rural) : NCCS ALL : 2+ Individuals], Urban [HSM (Urban) : NCCS ALL: 2+ Individuals], All Platform and Business News to HSM (U+R) : NCCS ALL : 2+ Individuals.

As per BARC data for Week 17 (Saturday, 25th April 2020 to Friday, 1st May 2020), the top 5 Hindi News channels in terms of gross viewership (000) [HSM (U+R) : NCCS All : 2+ Individuals] are as follows:

Aaj Tak – 375,817

ABP News – 285,808

Republic Bharat – 282,648

India TV – 281,496

Zee News – 253,307

The order remains unchanged from last week, as Aaj Tak maintains its hold over the numero uno position.

English News

On the other hand, in the English News genre in Week 17 [All India (U+R) : NCCS All : 2+ Individuals], India Today Television overtook Times Now to be placed in the second spot, even as Republic TV maintained its unbroken hold on the top spot. The top 5 English News channels in terms of gross viewership (000) are as follows:

Republic TV – 4,804

India Today Television – 3,312

Times Now – 2,763

CNN News18 – 2,033

DD India – 1,538