The Arnab Goswami led team of Republic TV had a reason to rejoice today after according to BARC’s ratings from 6 May 2017 – 18 May 2017( for cities with population more than 10 lakh) the total viewership of Republic TV stood at about 51.9%, more than double of Times Now which stood at 24.5%.
#RepublicNumber1 in week one! pic.twitter.com/abOkkcGSa0
— Republic (@republic) May 18, 2017
//platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsTo look at it via another angle, more people watched Republic TV than all the other News channels combined. This massive dominance of Arnab’s channel less than a fortnight after its launch explains as to why all the old players of the establishment were so nervous about Arnab’s rise.
We had reported how the journalists aligned with the Congress-left establishment had ganged up to attack Arnab in every way possible. The Times Group, Arnab’s former employers also appeared to be going the extra distance by accusing him of ‘theft’ possibly in-order to somehow stop his juggernaut.
The main fundamentals upon which the ratings seem to be based were the high profile exposes by the channel in a very short duration of time.
The Republic team ran exclusive reports on an alleged nexus between Lalu and gangster Shahabuddin, reopened the whole Sunanda Puskhar episode, infiltrated the online network of Lashkar-e-Taiba and also reported ISIS’s presence the Indian soil in just 12 days.
This domination of Republic TV in the English News media space spurred a lot of reactions ranging from the funny, the intelligent to the occasional outrageous one.
Here are a few:
People were pressing TV remote buttons to watch NewsX, CNN, NDTV & India Today but TRP went to Republic. Clear proof of EVM Tampering.
— चार लोग (@WoCharLog) May 18, 2017
Liberals: That means approx. 55% of India is watching other news. Republic TV has failed and must shut down. https://t.co/hs1hsoZe4B
— Ullas (@Hungrynfool) May 18, 2017
Reporter- Sir what do you have to say to your detractors?
Arnab- Let them BARC! pic.twitter.com/UKPFaCFsOr— one tip one hand_ (@OneTipOneHand_) May 18, 2017
So even if all News channels unite and form a Mahagathbandhan, they won’t be able to defeat Arnabhttps://t.co/FryWsTFkDV
— Hemant (@bija_hem) May 18, 2017
One user decided to pacify Arnab’s detractors by providing ideas to his critics about how they could pontificate that these high ratings might come back to haunt Arnab:
Has Arnab peaked too early? #ArticleIdeas
— Rahul Roushan (@rahulroushan) May 18, 2017
Finally as it turned out at the same time NDTV had managed to notch about 6.9% viewership and people didn’t shy away from commenting:
Shocking that @ndtv still has 6.9% share https://t.co/49cYLRb2m6
— The Masakadzas (@Nesenag) May 18, 2017
