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News genre expands by 12.93 per cent within eight weeks
The genre expanded significantly under the influence of a variety of events such as the Japan earthquake, the ICC Cricket World Cup 2011, the demise of Sri Sathya Sai Baba, and of course the big fat English royal wedding.
As India sat fixed to watch the many action-packed proceedings that occurred in the last two months, the deliverers of these records, the news channels, gained phenomenally.
According to TAM (C&S 15+, All India), the overall news genre gained as much as 12.93 per cent in viewership in the past eight weeks. For the period March 6-12, 2011, the genre had captured approximately 8.89 per cent of the total TV viewership.
In Week 12, it was the Japan earthquake that accumulated the maximum eyeballs, with a content share of 15.79 per cent, thereby pushing up the genre share to 9.64 per cent.
In Week 13, the overall viewership once again fell to 8.86 per cent as there was no significant news that took place during the period.
During Week 14 (March 27-April 3), and 15 (April 3 - April 9), it was the ICC Cricket World Cup 2011 that took centrestage. In Week 14, when Team India fought the Pakistan players to win the semi-final match, the World Cup formed 66.96 per cent (according to News Content Track Data) of the total news content on TV. As a result, the genre share moved up to 9.59 per cent.
Week 16 and 17 remained non-eventful, and the impact was evident on the genre. The slice shrunk to 8.29 per cent in Week 16, while in Week 17, it was 8.51 per cent.
During Week 18 (April 23-30), the genre soared up once again to 10.04 per cent with the extensive coverage of Sri Sathya Sai Baba and Prince William's wedding with Kate Middleton.
While the coverage of Sri Sathya Sai Baba's demise took away 14.86 per cent content share, the royal wedding captured another 12.8 per cent of the total genre's content share.