India Today news editor Rahul Kanwal on Thursday put out non-existent data to misleadingly claim a victory in the ongoing ‘TRP race’ between news networks. Taking to Twitter, journalist Rahul Kanwal patted his own back today to claim that India Today media network had garnered nearly 40.2 per cent of the viewership ratings last week i.e Week 39, 2020 (September 26 to October 2, 2020).
According to Kanwal, India Today was leading the TRP race to gain the top spot in the weekly viewership charts while beating Arnab Goswami’s led Republic TV, had garnered only 28 per cent of the views.
Times Now and CNN News18 were third and fourth respectively with 15.1 per cent and 8 per cent viewership respectively, as per Kanwal’s tweet.
Taking potshots at other media networks, especially Republic TV network, Kanwal claimed that the ‘truth spoke louder than lies’. The lies ultimately come crashing down, said Rahul Kanwal while putting up purported numbers to assert that India Today was most-watched news channel this week.
Interestingly, Rahul Kanwal, while boasting about India Today’s performance did not put out any credible data in the public to substantiate his claims.
Rahul Kanwal, who has been fighting an unsuccessful TRP war with Arnab Goswami and Republic TV for months now, however went on to declare that India Today has far more viewers than Republic TV.
But, the BARC data has a different story to tell. When one looks at the BARC data for Week-39, 2020, it appears that Rahul Kanwal was blatantly lying when he claimed that India Today was the most-watched channel last week.
BARC data shows Republic TV leading the ‘TRP race’
The BARC data for ‘Week-39’ for English News depicts the actual story that punctures the claims of Rahul Kanwal. According to BARC, Republic TV has a substantial lead over India Today in terms of last week’s viewership.
From 26th September 2020 To Friday, 2nd October 2020, Republic TV has garnered nearly 5056 impressions to lead the chart, while India Today stood at a distant third with just 1812 impressions.
Times Now, meanwhile is second on the list, leading India Today marginally. CNN News18 is on the fourth of the weekly ratings with 1226 impressions, followed by DD India. Interestingly, leftist news channel NDTV has not even featured in the top-five list of most viewed English news channels in the country.
As far as the Hindi News channels numbers are concerned, Republic media network’s ‘Republic Bharat’ leads India Today’s Aaj Tak by a considerable margin. Republic Bharat has garnered 206861 impressions, while India Today group’s Aaj Tak was at 179447.
Despite the availability of contrarian public data, it is rather perplexing to understand to why did Rahul Kanwal brazenly try to mislead the public by making false claims saying India Today had more viewers than any other channel in the country.
Many social media users had pointed this out to Rahul Kanwal. Kanwal, however, seems rather determined to stick to his claim, despite the fact that his claims are not supported by BARC data. In a second tweet, he shared some graphics expressing thanks to the viewers, again citing the same number and naming BARC this time. It is not clear how and which BARC website Kanwal is referring to make his claims.
We wanted to say a big thank you to our viewers for helping make @IndiaToday the number one news channel according to BARC data for Week 39’2020. While some so called news channels have been spinning lies, your faith vindicates our pledge to do journalism without fear or favour. pic.twitter.com/pQ6oMPvDuc
— Rahul Kanwal (@rahulkanwal) October 8, 2020
In the same tweet, he has also accused other channels of ‘spinning lies’.
India Today editor Rahul Kanwal had lied about ratings in April
This is not the first time that Rahul Kanwal and India Today has resorted to making such false claims regarding the viewership data of his media network. Amidst the coronavirus pandemic, on the similar lines as today, Rahul Kanwal had initiated a ‘TRP war’ to make misleading assertions that India Today was the most viewed network.
Rahul Kanwal had also asserted that viewers were spending twice the time on India Today than they did on their competitors.
Rahul Kanwal, who feverishly competes with Arnab Goswami and Republic, was caught by several social media users for brazenly lying about BARC ratings. We had reported in detail on how Rahul Kanwal’s self-laudatory tweets in April that were hollow and dishonest.
Perhaps, Rahul Kanwal continued failures to attract a respectable viewership to his channel, has now pushed him to openly lie about the viewership ratings.
