Govt’s anniversary celebrations drive viewership for Doordarshan

The televised crescendo of the central government’s two-year anniversary celebrations was watched by over 23 million unique viewers on 24 television channels, including those from state broadcaster Doordarshan and private news channels that aired the show.Data shared by TV ratings agency Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) India indicates coverage (in millions) of unique number of viewers that watched the programme for at least one minute. The DD network that aired the show across 10 channels, including DD National, DD Bharti, DD Kisan and regional channels like DD Bihar, DD Lucknow and DD Northeast, recorded a viewership of 14.8 million, while the remaining 10.08 million watched it across 14 different private news channels. Total viewership stood at 23.17 million.

In a six-hour glitzy event at New Delhi’s India Gate lawns on 28 May called Ek Nayi Subah (A New Dawn) interspersed with entertainment programmes, a gathering of political leaders, Bollywood celebrities and business executives discussed topics ranging from Surat having the cleanest railway station to a Braille-equipped train between Mysore and Varanasi for the visually impaired to the government’s sanitation programmes.

DD operates a total of 21 regional and national channels. Ek Nayi Subah generated 5.03 million impressions on an average across all channels. The average impressions (in million) can be interpreted as the number of viewers who watched the entire programme aggregated across all channels that telecast it.

Prasar Bharati that runs the Doordarshan network is clearly happy. A top official at Prasar Bharati, who did not want to be named, said: “These numbers are much higher compared to the viewership on a regular day at Doordarshan. Typically, DD National, the flagship channel of the state broadcaster, is watched by 2-3 million viewers during prime time,” he said. However, Ek Nayi Subah was telecast on several DD channels simultaneously.

“It’s a political event, not an India-Pakistan match. It’s a good number given the context and the duration of the event,” said Sunil Lulla, managing director and chairman at advertising firm Grey Group India.“The idea of the programme was to inspire people and showcase what everybody at the government is doing,” said the Prasar Bharti official.The reach of Hindi news channels is eight times that of English news channels at 97 million households (English news channels reach 12 million) as cited in an earlier Mint report.

The 14 news channels that aired Ek Nayi Subah at different points between 4.30pm and 11pm on 28 May were Aaj Tak, ABP News, CNN News18, ETV News Gujarati, India 24X7, India News, India Today TV, India TV, NDTV 24X7, NDTV India, News Nation, NewsX, Times Now and Zee News.

Source & Credit:http://www.livemint.com/Consumer/IMsxisCoZW25PGAoEmoKvI/Govts-anniversary-celebrations-drive-TV-viewership-for-DD.html

Forwarded By: Jainender Nigam,PB NewsDesk ,news.prasarbharati@gmail.com