BENGALURU: The Arnab Goswami headed Indian English News channel Republic TV has been leading the genre in terms of viewership right from week 19 of 2017, the week the channel was launched. Republic TV started with a bang – it had garnered 2.117 million weekly impressions as per Broadcast Audience Research Council of India (BARC) weekly list of top 5 English News channels All India (U+R): NCCS AB: Males 22+ Individuals in week 19 of 2017. The channel continued to lead the English News genre in week 37 of 2017 (Saturday, 9th September 2017 to Friday, 15th September 2017) with 871,000 weekly impressions, much better than the nadir of 854,000 weekly impressions in the previous week. Though Republic TV gained 17,000 more viewers in week 37, its other genre peers, except CNN News 18, lost ratings and the combined weekly impressions of the top 5 English News channels in week 37 of 2017 fell to 2.669 million weekly impressions which was lower than the previous week’s combined ratings of 2.76 million.
The gap between Republic TV and runner up Times Now widened to about 10,000 impressions as the latter recorded 771,000 weekly impressions in week 37 of 2017as compared to 813,000 weekly impressions in week 36. India Today Television also lost viewership in week 37 of 2017. The channel recorded 349,000 weekly impressions in week 37 of 2017 compared to 453,000 weekly impressions in week 36. CNN News 18 climbed to fourth place in week 37 of 2017 with 347,000 weekly impressions, better than rank 5 and the 310,000 weekly impressions in week 36 of 2017. BBC World News completed the quintet in week 37 of 2017 with 331,000 weekly impressions. The channel replaced week 36’s fourth placed NDTV24x7, which exited the top 5 English News channels list in week 37. Please refer to the figure below.
The average ratings of the top 5 channels in the English News genre between weeks 1 to 37 (except week 21 of 2017) were 2.466 million weekly impressions. The highest combined ratings of the top five channels from the English News genre were in week 11 of 2017 at 4.897 million weekly impressions, while the lowest were in week 2 of 2017 at 1.179 million weekly impressions.
