Mumbai: Newcomer Colors, the Hindi general entertainment channel from Viacom 18 Media Pvt Ltd, a joint venture between Viacom Inc and Network18, edged out rival, veteran general entertainment channels, Star Plus and Zee TV, this past Friday-Saturday in viewership, according to data given by Audience Measurement and Analytics Pvt Ltd (aMap).
Such ratings, especially if sustained, are a critical factor in pricing of advertising as well as in advertisers spending money on a particular channel.
TAM Media Research pvt Ltd data will come out on 16th October for the same period and is considered the industry standard, though some advertisers look at aMap as their data typically comes out on an overnight basis.
“Whether they (Colors) are No. 1 or No. 2, they got good inroads into audience viewership with driver properties such as Fear Factor and Bigg Boss,” says Shashi Sinha, CEO of Mumbai-based media specialist Lodestar Universal Pvt Ltd. “But the trick is to sustain this. These are early days yet.”
“As a launch, Colors was most successful with a line-up of good shows such as Jai Shri Krishna, Bigg Boss and Balika Vadhu,” says LS Krishnan, president, Radar, Mudra Communications Pvt Ltd. “The shows are fewer in number as compared to most other channels, but they’ve put all their marketing might behind these shows. Smart scheduling has also been their strategy; they have spread repeat telecasts of shows all through the day which helps them get incremental viewership.”
For 10 October for markets (North, West and East), Colors was leading in viewership at 31.6 GRPs (gross rating points), News Corp.’s Star Plus followed with 26.8 and Zee TV at 22.9.
On 11 October, Colors scored 33.4, Star Plus got 23.0 and Zee TV got 22.2. From Sunday, 12 October, however, Colors went to No. 3 position at 15.4, with Star Plus leading at 33.3 followed by Zee at 21.7.
A Gross Rating Point is the sum of TV viewership rating points for a channel’s various programmes over a specific time period.