BENGALURU: Pubcaster Doordarshan’s English news channel DD India was ranked second in Broadcast Audience Research Council of India’s (BARC) weekly list of top five English news channels in week 25 of 2019 (Saturday, 15 June 2019 to Friday, 21 June 2019, week or period under review). DD India made it to second spot after a hiatus of four weeks. Earlier the Doordarshan Network’s English news channel was involved in a dingdong battle for the pole position with the Arnab Goswami-headed Republic TV between weeks 13 and 19 of 2019 until Republic TV overtook it.
There was a slight improvement in the combined total of the impressions garnered by the top 5 English news channels in week 25 as compared week 24. Many genres/channels ratings had plunged in week 23 when BARC reverted to a previous method of treating landed changes and outliers. Ratings of some channels/genres had plunged even further in week 24. It must be pointed out that around the same time (week 23 of 2019), ICC’s cricket World Cup 2019 being played at England and Wales commenced. Because of the difference in time zones, the second part of the matches overlapped and over shot primetime slots of most channels including news channels in India, hence probably impacting ratings.
Earlier, BARC had stopped publishing ratings in the public domain for seven weeks starting week 6 of 2019 until week 12 to enable viewership stabilise after the implementation of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India’s (TRAI) new tariff order.
In week 25 of 2019, three channels from BARC’s weekly list of top 5 English news channels saw gains in ratings, while ratings of two fell. Republic TV continued to head BARC’s weekly list of English news channels with 0.572 million weekly impressions in week 25 of 2019 as compared to 0.556 million weekly impressions in the previous week. As mentioned above, DD India was ranked second with much improved ratings of 0.441 million weekly impressions as compared to 0.334 million weekly impressions and third rank in week 24.
At third rank was Times Now with 0.402 million weekly impressions in week 25 of 2019 as compared to 0.418 million weekly impressions and second rank in week 24. Moving up a place to fourth rank in the period under review was the India Today group’s English news channel India Today Television with 0.264 million weekly impressions as compared to 0.251 million weekly impressions in week 24 of 2019. Completing the quintet at rank 5 was CNN News18 with 0.261 million weekly impressions in week 25 of 2019 as compared to rank four and 0.289 million weekly impressions in the previous week.
