Historic events shore up news channel TRPs

The Royal Wedding was a big affair and was being covered over an entire week. There was a great buzz around it and BBC Entertainment and TLC,which were airing it,went all out to promote it. Luckily,people were interested. So much so that despite it being aired at 3.15 pm,when the actual wedding took place,the viewership shot up considerably. The market share of the English channels during this event went up from 1.5 to 1.7.

However,it was the assasination of Osama that shot up the market share of the English news channels from 1.4 to 1.6 and the market share of the Hindi news channels from 4.2 to 5.7.

That,however,did not have a huge effect on IPL. Says Shah,”It is a sporting event and goes on for 49 days – every day about 28 – 30 million viewers tune in to watch this sport and these three news items grabbed the attention only for the three days when it actually happened.”

The ratings presented by aMap show that on April 29,the day of the royal wedding,the Rajasthan Royals vs Mumbai Indians match averaged TRP of as low as 1.56 per cent and Royal Challengers Bangalore vs Pune Warriors had 3.00 TRP. On May 2 when Osama was killed,the TRP for Mumbai Indians vs Kings XI Punjab was 1.63 and Delhi Daredevils vs Kochi Tuskers Kerala had 2.31. On April 24,the day of Sathya Sai Baba death was 2.27 for Deccan Chargers vs Mumbai Indians and 2.25 for Rajasthan Royals vs Kochi Tuskers Kerala.

It was the killing of Osama that was number one followed by the death of Sathya Sai Baba and then the Royal Wedding that got the highest TRPs on news channels,adds a highly-placed source from a Hindi news channel.

Neeraj Sanan,EVP Marketing and Distribution,MCCS (Media Content and Communication Services) states that since the two major news of Sathya Sai Baba’s demise and Osama’s execution death came out in the morning and the matches are aired live in the evening,the impact was not much. He pointed out that the first match is aired at 4.00pm and has less TRPs as people are at work at that time. And the second match takes place at primetime so it will get its maximum share of TRPs. He,however,concedes that any news item that generally involves human emotions like the coverage of tsunami or elections at such times affect the matches as the human interest stories generate more attention. But it was the World Cup victory that took away all the charm from the IPL,he concludes,as he feels that India as a whole took away the World Cup and it was difficult to watch India divided and playing cricket right after the victory.

A source close to the sports-entertainment channel says that news items cannot affect the IPL matches as a viewer cannot watch a news coverage continuously,for a long time. He also says,”Women were more interested in the Royal Wedding. Men are the IPL’s target audience. So if there are reports stating that TRP during these days for the IPL was low then it can be for some other reasons and not the news updates.” (All figures have been provided by aMap,a TV audience measurement system)