BENGALURU / MUMBAI: The on-air spat continued unabated as the Broadcast Audience Research council of India (BARC) released it numbers to its paid subscribers for week 26 of 2017 (Saturday, 24 June 2017 to Friday, 30 June 2017) at 11am on Thursday.
When BARC released public data, it was observed that while there was an increase from 868 to 965 impressions (000s) Sum -- a difference of 97. Times Now, albeit at the second position, grew in impressions from 670 to 868 -- a difference of 198 impressions (000s) Sum. India Today Television and CNN News18 interchanged their positions and this week featured at the third and fourth positions, respectively.
Earlier, at 11am telecast, both channels continued to claim numero uno status in the English New genre on air, bandying their own interpretations of the statistics. BARC numbers of the top 5 English News genre channels (All India (U+R) : NCCS AB : Males 22+ Individuals) that are released at 1300 hours in the public domain show the new entrant Republic TV continued to lead ratings in week 26.
Republic TV led the table at first place with 9,65,000 weekly impressions followed by once upon a time leader Times Now with 8,68,000 weekly impressions in week 26 of 2017. Following as if by rote at number 3 was India Today Television with 4,51,000 weekly impressions. Network 18’s English News channel CNN was placed fourth with 3,80,000 impressions followed by NDTV with 3,44,000 weekly impressions.
Right from the time it was launched in week 19 of 2017 (Saturday, 6 May 2017 to Friday, 12 May 2017), Republic TV has been leading the English News genre ratings. The channel opened its launch week, week with a bang, displacing Times Now as the genre leader, with a massive 21,18,000 weekly impressions. Times Now, the second most watched English News genre channel in week 19 trailed far behind with 11,48,000 weekly impressions. Over time, the gap between the two has narrowed down 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.
As reported by Indiantelevision.com earlier, 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.
