News Viewership Surged On Poll Day; AajTak, NDTV 24×7 Most Watched

imageIt comes once in five years and the minute by minute swing in fortunes and the import of the whole affair makes it a television event way more thrilling than 20/20 cricket. Not surprisingly, as counting began for the general elections to the 15th Lok Sabha, India was glued to TV, radio, websites and Twitter (the hashtag #Indiavotes09 was the top trending topic for most part of Saturday, alongside Angels and Demons and Wolfram Alpha). The Election Commission website crashed under the weight of an anxious citizenry seeking up-to-the-minute data. The National Informatics Centre, the webmasters, were prepared for 2,800 hits per second, not the 300,000 hits per second that they eventually got, according to this TOI story.

According to data from audience measurement firm aMap, or Audience Measurement and Analytics Ltd, news channels saw a huge surge in viewership on Saturday (click chart to enlarge). Their gross rating points (GRP), a metric that takes into account the number of people watching a channel as well as the time they spent watching it, registered a huge jump when compared with a normal Saturday last month. Among Hindi channels, AajTak, from the TV Today Network, was the most watched, with 20.2 GRPs, up 249% from a comparable Saturday last month (see chart). Star News was second with 17.2 GRPs and India TV was third, with 13.1 GRPs.

Among the English news channels, NDTV 24×7 was the most watched, with a GRP of 3.7, up 115% from a comparable Saturday last month. Times Now came a close second, with 3.6 GRPs and CNN IBN was third, with 2.7 GRPs.

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