Poll counting day numbers: Republic reports great traction for its digital assets

The Assembly elections in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh, especially the former, have elicited tremendous interest as people wanted to see how the BJP would perform in its traditional stronghold and whether Rahul Gandhi, as the new Congress President, would be able to make a dent. 

The run-up to the polls saw news channels come up with a plethora of special programmes, discussions, analyses and interviews. The exit polls further added to the interest factor as people wanted to see which seat predictions would turn out to be the most accurate. 

Meanwhile, along with TV news channels, people also turned to digital media to get the latest news and analyses around the polls. 

The average daily watch time for the entire English news genre on broadcast is at 10.48 million minutes basis Week 49 data and 9.04 million minutes daily for the last 4 weeks average as per BARC in its core TG of 22+ Male AB All India. 

Vikas Khanchandani, CEO, Republic TV, said, “On counting day, we had 7.78 million minutes consumed on Republic World Digital assets and 5.2 million minutes on Hotstar, thereby delivering a massive 12.98 million minutes combined. This is a phenomenal video growth for Republic TV, though in all fairness to broadcast, the consumption for the genre will be very high when the data is released by BARC on December 28, 2017 for Week 51. We, at Republic World, are committed to building the largest news video platform in the country.”