BENGALURU: Weeks 12 of 2020 (Saturday, 21 March 2020 to Friday 27 March 2020) and 13 of 2020 (Saturday, 28 March 2020 to Friday, 3 April 2020) witnessed big changes in Broadcast Audience Research Council of India (BARC) weekly lists of Top 10 Channels Across Genres on All Platforms. Week 12, the first week of the All India 21-day lockdown due to the dreaded covidvirus-19 had seen the entry of a Hindi News channel, the free to air (FTA) AajTak from the India Today group at rank 7. Only three GEC channels, two of which were FTA –Dangal (at rank 1), Big Magic (at rank 8) and Pay channel Sony Sab (at rank 3), were present in BARCs’ across genres on all platforms list in week 12 of 2020. Three Movies channels were also present in the list in week 12 along with two Telugu and one channel each of Tamil and Hindi News genres. Combined viewership of the Top 10 channels across genres in week 12 of 2020 was 8 percent higher than the combined viewership in week 11. From the Network’s perspective there were two channels each from Sony Pictures Network India (SPN), Star India and Zee Entertainment Enterprises Limited (Zeel) and one channel each from Enterr10 Television, Sun TV, TV Today group and Viacom18.
Week 13 of 2020 saw combined viewership of Top 10 channels across genres on all Platform climb even further- week 13 of 2020 saw week on week combined weekly impressions grow 18.3 percent as compared to the previous week. Eight of the channels in the weekly list for week 13 were the same as in week 12, but with higher ratings and a shuffling of ranks. Star India’s flagship Telugu GEC Star Maa and AajTak exited the list in week 13 to make way for DD National (at rank 1) and Viacom18’s Kids channel Nick (at rank 9). BARC attributes DD National’s growth of viewership to re-runs of programmes such as Ramayan, Shaktiman and Buniyaad amongst others.
Four Hindi GECs, three channels from the Hindi Movies genre and one channel each from the Kids, Tamil and Telugu genres made up BARC’s weekly list of Top 10 Channels Across Genres on All Platforms. Please refer to the figure below:
Top 10 Pay Channels Across Genres
BARC’s weekly list of Top 10 Pay Channels Across Genres in week 12 of 2020 had seen the exit of five big GECs’, four of which were Hindi GEC’s and one was a Kannada GEC. All the channels were flagship channels. The Hindi GECs’ were Viacom18’s Colors, SPN’s Sony Entertainment Television, Star India’s Star Plus and Zeel’s Zee TV and the Kannada GEC was Zeel’s Zee Kannada. Three of the channels that replaced these GECs’ were Hindi Movies channels and two were Telugu GEC channels. BARC revealed during a teleconference that many GECs’ have included classic soaps& dramas and movies as big part of their programming, more so in South India. Four Telugu channels, three Hindi Movies channels and one channel each from the Hindi GEC, Kids and Tamil genres made up BARC weekly list of Top 10 Pay Channels Across genres in week 12 of 2020. There were two channels each from SPN, Star India, Sun Tv Network, Viacom18 and Zeel.
Week 13 of 2020 saw two channels exit BARCs’ weekly list of Top 10 Pay Channels Across Genres-the Sun Tv Network’s Telugu GEC Gemini and Zeel’s Zee Telugu. The new entrants were pubcasterDoordarshan’s (DD) flagship channel DD National and the Sun Tv Network’s Tamil Movies channel KTV. Hence there were three channels from the Hindi Movies genre, two channels each from Hindi GECs’, Tamil and Telugu and one channel from the Kids genre. From the network’s perspective, there were two channels each from SPN, Star India, Sun Tv Nework, Viacom18 and one channel each from DD and Zeel.
Please refer to figure below.
Top 10 Free Channels Across Genres
BARC’s weekly list of Top 10 Free Channels Across Genres in week 12 of 2020 saw the exit of one Hindi Movies channel -ABZY Movies, to be replaced by Hindi News channel AajTak. The other nine channels in week 12 were same as in the previous week, with some shuffling in ranks. There were three channels each from the Bhojpuri and Hindi Movies genres, two channels from the Hindi GEC genre and one channel each from the Hindi News and Youth genres. There were four channels from Zeel, three channels from Enterr10 Television, two channels from B4U Network and one channel from the India Today group.
Nine of the channels in BARC’s weekly list of Top 10 Free Channels Across Genres in week 13 of 2020 were the same as in week 12. The channel that exited the list was Zeel’s Bhojpuri channel Big Ganga, which was replaced by DD’s DD National. The nine channels from the previous week had some reshuffling of ranks. There were three channels each from the Hindi GEC and Hindi Movies genres, two channels from the Bhojpuri genre and one channel each from the Hindi News and the Youth genres. There were three channels each from Enterr10 Television and Zeel, two channels from B4U and one channel each from DD and the India Today group.
Please refer to the figure below:
