BENGALURU: In week 5 of 2019 (Saturday, 26 January 2019 to Friday, 1 February 2019), the last week that Broadcast Audience Research Council of India (BARC) had published data on its website before the implementation of the new TRAI tariff regime, pubcaster Doordarshan’s English news channel DD News had sprung a surprise. DD News had run ahead of all its private peer genre channels and was the most-watched English news channel based on viewership data with 1.503 million weekly insertions in BARC’s weekly list of top 5 English news channels  (All India (U+R) : NCCS AB : Males 22+ Individuals). The private English news channel Republic News was the second most-watched channel in the English news genre with 0.725 million weekly insertions. Both the top English news channels, public as well as private, in week 13 of 2019 are free-to-air (FTA).

BARC has recommenced putting up weekly viewership data on its website starting with week 13 of 2019 (Saturday, 23 March 2019 to Friday, 29 March 2019). The ranking status quo for the top three was the same – DD News topped viewership data in week 13 with 0.737 million weekly impressions, followed by Republic TV at second spot with 0.618 million weekly impressions. Hence, the Arnab Goswami headed Republic TV was the most watched private English news channel in the country.

At third place was Times Now with 0.421 million weekly impressions. At fourth spot was Network18’s CNN News18 with 0.286 million weekly impressions very closely followed by India Today Television with 0.284 million weekly impressions. In week 5 of 2019, it was India Today Television that was ranked fourth followed by CNN News18.