Fall boosts viewership for business news channels, sites

The big fall in the stock markets on Monday and a lesser (but still significant) fall on Tuesday was good news for business news channels.

On Monday, the four business channels—CNBC TV18, CNBC Awaaz, NDTV Profit, and Zee Business—saw their total viewership zoom 63% compared with their average viewership on the previous four Mondays.

Data from Audience Measurement and Analytics Ltd, a Mumbai-based television audience measurement company put the total channel share garnered by these channels at 1.3% against an average 0.8% on the previous four Mondays.

The viewership share of CNBC Awaaz and NDTV Profit, doubled to 0.4% whereas CNBC TV18’s share, at 0.5%, was up 25%.

Viewership data for Tuesday will only be available on Wednesday but chances are the numbers would have remained high.

The mayhem on Dalal Street also saw traffic on the financial web portals rise significantly. Moneycontrol.com, a financial website, claims to have got more than 14 million visitors on Monday. “Our traffic went up more than 20% yesterday over other days,” said Vidya Kumaraswamy, editor, Moneycontrol.com. Another news portal, Rediff.com, claimed its business news site Rediffmoneybiz.com saw a 134% rise in the number of clicks on the two days compared with the average of the past 15 days.

Manish Agarwal, vice-president, marketing, Rediff.com, claimed the majority of visitors were “common people who are not part of regular investing groups”.