Viewership on Doordarshan drops as last episode of Ramayan airs on channel

Doordarshan, that was seeing significant growth in viewership since the repeat launch of shows like Ramayan, has recorded a drop in consumption after the last episode of the mythological show aired on the channel.

According to data released by BARC on April 30, viewership on Doordarshan, popularly known as DD, dropped by 46 percent as Ramayan transitioned to follow-up serial Uttar Ramayan.

The channel saw a 66 percent drop in impressions in week-16 (period between April 18 and 24) as compared to week-15 (week starting April 11) in the morning slot.

In week 15, when Ramayan aired in the morning slot from Monday to Friday, impressions stood at 54,667; whereas, for Uttar Ramayan, only 18,493 impressions were recorded in the same slot.

While impressions were better for Uttar Ramayan in the evening slot, they were a lot lower when compared to what Ramayan had recorded.

In week-15, on weekdays in the evening slot, Ramayan registered 68,407 impressions; while Uttar Ramayan saw 48,553 impressions in week-16 – a drop of 29 percent in impressions.

Viewership did go down on DD, but TV did not witness a significant drop in consumption. This means, many who were earlier watching Ramayan, turned to other channels once it got over.

If you are wondering what did viewers watch, then the answer is: news, kids content and music channels, in the morning band.

During Prime Time, viewers preferred more GEC (General Entertainment Channels) and movies. Most viewers, who shifted to other GECs, preferred mythological dramas.

It looks like the shift in viewers is helping news, movies and kids channels to maintain viewership, which has started to show a slight decrease in consumption.

According to BARC data, while genre wise share of movies has increased by a percent from week-15 to week-16, the share of news saw a slight decline from 16 percent in week-15 to 15 percent in week-16.

In terms of viewership as well, the growth in news genre was 164 percent in week-16, as compared to 195 percent in the previous week. Similarly, the movie genre grew 61 percent in week-16, as compared to 67 percent in week-15.