From Ramayan To Cricket: What India Watched On TV During Covid-19 Lockdown

If there is one thing that the lockdown imposed by the government due to the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic brought back to life was popular soaps aired on television during 1990s. From the mythological Ramayan and Mahabharat telecast back in 1980s and 90s, rerun of cricket matches between arch rivals India and Pakistan across formats – one-day and T20 – were a silver lining for many stuck at home.

A recent report by CARE Ratings has sourced and analysed the latest available data (for week between April 4 and 10) from Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) India on what Indians have been watching. The study, however, does not include content streamed on over-the-top (OTT) platforms in India.

In the week April 4 to April 10, television viewership in India surged 32 per cent over the previous week to 20.4 billion impressions, the CARE Ratings' findings suggest. ‘Impressions’ refers to the number of individuals of a target audience who viewed an "event", averaged across minutes.

ALSO READ: Indians watching more TV amid lockdown, viewership up by 6%: BARC data

The top seven channels in both these weeks (week April 4 - April 10 and the immediate preceeding week) remained constant and most of these channels belong to the General Entertainment (GEC) category. DD National, which is a free-to-air Hindi GEC, was the most viewed channel with 1.9 billion impressions in week April 4 to April 10.

"This channel’s popularity can be largely attributed to the telecast of the super hit show ‘Ramayan’, which was initially telecasted on TV in the year 1987. During the priod under review - April 4 to April 10 - viewership of DD National grew sharply by 22 per cent," wrote Madan Sabnavis, chief economist at CARE Ratings in a co-authored report with Vahishta M. Unwalla, an analyst at the ratings agency.

ALSO READ: Ramayana helps break lockdown boredom and TRP charts for DD National

Within the Hindi GEC genre, the top five channels for the period under review were DD national, Dangal, Sony SAB, Big Magic and DD Bharti. Top two programmes during the same week were mythological shows – ‘Ramayan’ and ‘Mahabharat’.

“Ramayan had nearly 3.5 times higher viewership than Mahabharat and both serials had greater number of viewers in the urban markets, with shares of 56 per cent (Ramayan) and 63 per cent (Mahabharat). Ramayan is telecast on DD National, while Mahabharat is aired on DD Bharati,” Sabnavis and Unawlla wrote.

The 'Sports' category, however, had less takers and the top five sports channels had bare minimal viewership of 238 million impressions in the week April 4 to April 10, findings suggest. This is despite earlier events such as ICC World Cup U-19 India vs Pakistan matches, ICC World Cup T20 India vs Pakistan, Asia Cup T20 India vs Pakistan, etc. being telecast during this period.

High appetite for news?

The ‘Hindi news’ category, according to CARE Rating's analysis, had the highest viewership in the news genre. The top five channels within this category were Aaj Tak, ABP News, India TV, Republic Bharat and Zee News.

"The cumulative viewership for these five channels rose to 1.4 billion impressions for the week April 4 to April 10. This was followed by regional news channels, which have large audiences," CARE Ratings said.

ALSO READ: Punjabi to Bangla: TV channels bet on regional languages for success

Segment – wise, Marathi news category led the way with 552 million impressions, followed by Kannada (484 million), Telugu (417 million), Tamil (387 million), Bangla (286 million), Malayalam (249 million), Oriya (159 million) and Assamese (121 million). This was followed by English news category with minimal viewership of 5 million impressions for the period under review.

“After witnessing a peak in the week 21th to 27th March, news channels witnessed a continuous drop in viewership numbers. This is contrary to the belief that news channels would have continued to gain viewership in times of a pandemic situation in the country as well as globally,” Sabnavis and Unawlla wrote.

The top five Hindi movie channels for the period under review, according to CARE Ratings study were Sony Max, Zee Cinema, Star Gold, B4U Kadak and Star Gold 2. On the other hand, Star Movies, Sony PIX, Movies Now, HBO and MNX channels topped the charts in the English movie genre.