BENGALURU: The Arnab Goswamin-led Indian English news channel Republic TV continued to lead the genre for the sixteenth week in a row (fifteenth, if numbers for week 21 are not considered) in week 34 (Saturday, 19 August 2017 to Friday, 25 August 2017).

Republic TV was launched on 6 May 2017, the first day of week 19 of 2017 and has been leading the genre since. The channel garnered 1.048 million weekly impressions, in week 34, almost the same as the 1.044 million weekly impressions it had in the previous week.

As reported by Indiantelevision.com earlier, just a couple of weeks after the launch of Republic TV – in week 21, its peer Indian English news channels had withdrawn their watermarks owing to which BARC was unable to fairly measure ratings for the English News genre – the rebelling channels didn’t want BARC to measure the new entrant's ratings, claiming that Republic TV was using unfair means to garner more ratings. BARC refused to kowtow, saying that it was only a measuring agency, not a compliance agency. For one week ratings of Indian English News channels were not published by BARC, until the erring channels returned to the BARC audience measurement fold.

For a change, this Thursday, just post 1100 am when BARC reveals ratings to channels, Times Now did mention the breakup in percentage terms its overall relative share as has been the norm. The channel just ran a still showing that it had a relative share of 37 percent. It’s bête noire, Republic TV, however did give a breakup of primetime ratings from its perspective. Both channels however did continue their traditional ticker tapes boasts and claims, while running each other down.

Broadcast Audience Research Council of India (BARC) data for Top 5 English News channels (All India (U+R) : NCCS AB : Males 22+ Individuals) for week 34 reveals that two of the top 5 English News channels lost viewership in week 34 as compared to week 33. While Times Now lost ratings, CNN News 18 and NDTV 24x7 interchanged fourth and fifth places in week 34, with the latter losing viewership. Overall, the genre seems to have reported lower viewership if one were to go by the combined weekly impressions of the top 5 English News channels in week 34 ad compared to week 33. The combined weekly impressions of the top five English News channels were 2.979 million in week 34 as compared to 3.091 million in week 33.

Republic TV’s closest competitor Times Now lost over 203,000 weekly impressions at the reported 0.836 million weekly impressions in week 34 as compared to the 1.039 million weekly impressions in week 33. India Today Television retained its third place in the list with 0.437 million weekly impressions in week 34 as compared to 0.366 million weekly impressions in week 33.

CNN News 18 was at fourth place in week 34 with 0.333 million weekly impressions as compared to fifth place in week 33 with 0.290 weekly impressions. NDTV 24x7 was fifth in the week with 0.325 million weekly impressions as compared to 0.352 million weekly impressions and fourth place in week 33.