MUMBAI/BENGALURU: It's a coup of sorts. The leader in the English news genre has been surprised by the newcomer -- Republic TV. According to BARC India viewership data for week 19, Republic TV has got 2117 weekly impressions and Times Now lags with 1148. NDTV 24x7 (352), India Today Television (350) and CNN News18 (315) have respectively bagged the third, fourth and fifth positions.
The controversy-ridden Arnab Goswami-headed English News channel claims on its channel a 52 percent viewership in the very first week of operations which started on 6 May 2017 – this would be Broadcast Audience Research Council of India (BARC) week 19 (Saturday, 6 May 2017 to Friday 12 May 2017). The channel started mentioning this news around 11am today. BARC in normal course gives data to paid subcribers at 11am. It has done it is this time too despite NBA's caution.
The channel says that the English News genre leader until week 18, Times Now could garner only 25 percent viewership. Comparative numbers for other channels mentioned by Republic TV are: CNN News 18 and NDTV 24 X 7 – 7 percent each and India Today Television 8 percent.
As reported by us earlier, the News Broadcaster Association (NBA) had written to BARC on 17 May urging it not to release Republic TV’s viewership data until Republic TV completely stopped the NBA alleged malpractice of being on multiple LCNs’/genres on several DPOs’ and MSOs’.
The channel has been running a special show - at the time of writing - on which it celebrated its leadership position, bringing in its representatives of its 14-odd news partners who could not praise Arnab, his style of journalism, and his achievement enough. As well as journalists, editors from its team in different parts of the country. Most of them talked about the fact that the channel was put together in a matter of three to five months, and that its pole position was attained in English news in just its first week. And they also patted each other on their back for the stories that the channel has been reporting on for the past 10-11 days.
"They have raised him to demi-god status," says a media observer. "Or maybe God status. What will the establishment do now? And what will Arnab and his team do?"
