India ratings: IBN & Aaj Tak win elections coverage

English news broadcaster CNN IBN and Hindi news channel Aaj Tak garnered the most viewers during the India elections, its been confirmed.

Aaj Tak emerged as the leader in its genre, with a channel share of 27 per cent, followed by STAR News with 19 per cent and India TV with 13 per cent. IBN-7 remained fourth in the viewership ladder with a 10 per cent share, while ZEE News took a share of 9 per cent and NDTV India had a 7 per cent share on the day of the elections results on 16th May.

Among the English news channels, CNN-IBN had the highest relative share of 38 per cent followed by Times Now with 27 per cent and NDTV 24X7 with 26 per cent relative share.

Dilip Venkatraman, chief marketing officer, IBN18 Network, says, “CNN-IBN’s victory was possible as we delivered a complete 360 degree experience by enabling multi-media touch points, be it on TV, Internet, mobile or other media.”

Arnab Goswami, editor-in-chief, Times Now, says, “Our focus was more on news, than numbers. And that’s the reason why we took a considered decision not to do an exit poll, and focus on breaking stories, which is our forte.”

According to data provided by TAM Media Research, among all the Indian channels, Hindi news channels showed a 15.6 per cent channel share as compared to the 5.02 per cent share of the same day of the previous week. Even the English news channels had an 1.2 per cent English news genre share over the same day of the previous week, when it was 0.37 per cent.