Television viewership fell by 6% in week 16 but now the trends are showing that it has started to stabilize. According to the latest data released by BARC-Nielsen, in week 17 there has been only 1% decline in daily and weekly time spent by users watching television.
BARC said that News channels have seen much more new viewers during COVID-19 period. According to the council, an overall 13% of the News channels viewers across India didn’t use to watch the news before the coronavirus crisis. Rajasthan, Gujarat and Assam and North East recorded the highest proportion of new viewers for the News genre.
While News channels are getting higher views, the Music genre is suffering. Viewership of music channels has reduced across all markets of India during COVID-19 period. Despite an increase in daily tune-ins to Music channels the viewership actually decreased because 3% and 21% lower viewing minutes and average time spent by one user on those channels.
Mythological and Classic shows are leading in across the genres. General Entertainment Channels like Star Plus ratings were dropping because of lack of fresh shows but as the channel launched Ramayan there has been a huge 65% increase in viewership compared to the previous week. Similarly, the launch of Mahabharat on Colors also resulted in a 24% boost of their viewership.
Classic and old content popularity is not limited to GEC only, Music channels have also changed their pattern of broadcasting songs. Percentage of new songs from 2020 fell sharply by 31.3% while the percentage of old songs being broadcasted increased by up to 57.9%.
