IPL impact: Zee unscathed; Star and Sony feel the pinch

Mumbai, April 23

Now that the Indian Premier League (IPL) is in full swing, are prime-time soaps losing viewership? The IPL so far has garnered the highest number of eyeballs but Mr Subhash Chandra-owned Zee TV claims that its general entertainment channel (GEC) has been able to grow its gross rating points (GRP) over the weekend. Citing data from aMap, the channel says its daily GRPs grew from 25.8 (the previous Friday) to 29.7 last Friday, when the first IPL match was played at Bangalore. The next match on Saturday at Mohali also saw GRPs jumping from 17.7 to 26.6. The Sunday match also saw GRPs double from the previous week from17.6 to 35.5. GRPs are a cumulative sum of television rating points over a time period.

Mr Tarun Mehra, Business Head, Zee TV, said, “Cricket is like a religion in India and hence we were closely watching the GEC trend once the matches started. I am very happy to note that besides cricket, there is another habit that is hard to break and that’s daily soaps. Our growth is ample proof of the same.” One of the popular soaps through the week on Zee is Betiya.

Data from TAM revealed the growing daily GRPs for Zee TV as well. GRPs on Friday stood at 25 compared to 22 registered during the previous week. On Saturday also, the GRPs for the channel jumped from 14 to 17 indicating a marginal growth.

However, the other leading channel Star Plus did not display a similar trend. Star Plus dropped GRPs from 32.7 to 27.7 on Friday (the first day of IPL), from 29 to 24 on Saturday; and from 35.9 to 25.2 on Sunday, according to aMAP.

Data from TAM also showed a drop in growth rates from 34 to 27 GRPs on Friday between week 15 and week 16 and on Saturday there was a marginal drop from 28 to 23 on a week-to-week comparison.

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