Immediately after the Ayodhya another news story broke out in the media at around 15:00 hrs. As expected the ratings of various news channels started climbing and both Hindi and English news genre saw a surge in its viewership. The analysis again compares the surge with the overall performance of the news channels in June 05 and also with the ratings garnered on July 5th, the day Ayodhya attack happened.

Incidentally AajTak started reporting on the bombings at 2:23PM whereas NDTV India started reporting the event at 2:28 PM.

On 7th July we observe that AajTak takes a lead during the morning hours and NDTV India taking over at about 3PM and reaching a peak of 0.45 in the 10PM slot. AajTak matches NDTV India and reaches a similar peak at 11PM time slot. Comparing this with the trends of June the ratings are higher than .38 rating that AajTak got. Comparing this with July 5th we see that the channel peaked at 0.65 at 12PM and at 0.44 and 0.47 at 2PM and 11PM.


Important thing to be noted is that the Ayodhya happened in the morning hours where as the London Bombings happened during the afternoon (14:30 IST). Both the events drove the viewership of NDTV India and helped the channel to peak to similar levels in Mumbai.

Comparing its performance with AajTak we clearly see that the jump in the ratings of AajTak is sharp as compared to its June levels whereas NDTV India the jump is not that prominent.

AajTak - Mumbai

Ayodhya Attack on July 5th gave AajTak a rating of 0.34 when the attack was unfolding and the jump was not so significant in the morning time where it is already strong, but the main gains come in the evening slot where it attained a peak of 0.45 and 0.51 in the evening slot on 5th and 7th respectively.

The jump in ratings as we have already seen was huge wherein the ratings doubled in both the cases over the June levels.

The Hindi News Genre touched a high of 2.5 (Figure 13) during the 11PM day part in Mumbai which is actually higher than 2.2 touched during Ayodhya attack and NDTV India managed to reach a similar peak in terms of ratings whereas for AajTak the July 7th peak at 11PM was lower than the ratings for the same day part on July 5th.

• The average rating for AajTak for June 05 was 0.10 with a market share of 1.07 and on 5th July it went up to 0.17 with a market share of 1.99 %. The average rating for 7th July, 2005 was 0.14 with a market share of 1.45.
  
  
• NDTV India had a rating of 0.12 and a market share of 1.29 for the month of June and it shot up to 0.18 and market share increased to 2.11. The average rating for 7th July was 0.14 with an average market share of 1.44.
  
  
• The impact of the London attack too was much more on the viewership of AajTak than on NDTV India. NDTV India came out as the preferred channel as it managed to breach AajTak ratings even in the morning day part when the attacks happened.
  
  
• The average usage per viewer was 14 mins for NDTV India as against 11.73 mins for AajTak.
  
  
• Hindi News genre managed a rating of 0.92 for the day with a market share of 10.67. In June 05 the same figures stood at 0.63 and 6.63 respectively. On 7th July the average ratings for the day went up to 1 and market share went up to 10.37.

In case of Ayodhya the jump in the viewership of Hindi News mainly driven by AajTak and NDTV India was very pronounced and the same continue to happen for London due to close bonding of Gujaratis with UK, as there are a lot of NRG's staying in London. The Times of India on 8th July reported that the ISD lines between Ahmedabad and London were jammed for hours as all of them were frantically calling to know about the well being of their friends and relatives.

This explains the gains that AajTak made during the 7PM to 12 AM slot in Ahmedabad. The peak rating (1.4) of 10PM is substantially higher than June 05 ratings for the time slot.

NDTV India also made huge gains over its June performance during both these events. But in this particular market, the gains made by AajTak outpaced the gains of NDTV India wherein on July 5th it could reach only 0.7 and on July 7th it could touch 0.6. In both the cases, the evening ratings of AajTak were double that of NDTV India.