BENGALURU: The Arnab Goswami led Indian English News channel Republic TV continued to lead the ratings in its genre for week 25 of 2017 (Saturday, 17 June 2017 to Friday, 23 June 2017). Broadcast Audience Research Council of India (BARC) weekly data for week 25 showed that Republic TV topped the charts with 868,000 weekly impressions, followed at a fair distance behind (29.6 percent behind) by the earlier genre leader Times Now which scored 670,000 weekly impressions.

This analysis comes with a few caveats. BBC World News has been present in the weekly top five English News channels list for 18 of the first 25 weeks of 2017. It has not been considered here, since it is not an Indian English News channel, but its ratings have been added to the sum of ratings of the top 5 channels in the English New genre as well as to arrive at average weekly ratings. The combined weekly impressions (CWI) mentioned in this analysis includes only those numbers that the channels garnered when they were in the weekly top five channels’ lists. Their overall actual weekly average impressions during the 25 weeks of 2017 could be different. BARC data for weeks 1 to 25 of 2017 for Top 5 English news channels - All India (U+R): NCCS AB : Males 22+ Individuals has been used. For equitable comparison, week 21 of 2017 data for the genre has not been considered at some places in this analysis.

Right from its launch in week 19 of 2017 (6 May 2017 to 12 May 2017) Republic TV has led the genre, displacing Times Now.  During week 19, Republic TV had 2,118,000 weekly impressions, almost double that of Times Now which had 1,148,000 weekly impressions in the same week.  As the weeks have passed, the curiosity factor in Republic TV seems to have diminished and in week 24 of 2015, the difference in the ratings of these two main protagonists in the English News genre was 28,000 weekly impressions with Republic TV’s ratings at 963,000 weekly impressions to Times Now ratings at 935,000 weekly impressions.

The launch of Republic TV gave rise to an ugly war between the existing Indian English News channels and the new entrant. For one week, week 21 of 2017, ratings of the top Indian English news channels were not published as they had stripped their new feeds of the BARC audio watermark. The NBA-backed channels returned to the BARC fold in week 22. Please refer to the chart below for the comparative ratings of the two channels:

Though Republic TV seems to have helped increase the ratings for the genre, overall the genre has seen a progressive fall in the combined weekly ratings of the top 5 channels in week 25 from the high of week 19. Before the launch of Republic TV in week 19, the top 5 English News channels had an average combined viewership of 18,83,611 weekly impressions (for weeks 1 to 18 of 2017). After the launch of Republic TV, average viewership ratings of the top 5 channels from the English News genre climbed up by 15.4 percent to 2,173,417 weekly impressions during weeks 1 to 25 of 2017.

Please refer to the figure below for English News genre ratings in 2017 until week 25.

Please refer to the figure below for the list of top 5 English News channels for week 25.