After registering a decline of nearly 60 per cent in its viewership ratings in the past three weeks — first due to the cine workers’ union strike and later due to the terror attacks in Mumbai — normalcy seems to have returned to the genre of Hindi general entertainment channels (GEC).
For the 49th week of the year (November 30-December 6), the Hindi GEC genre recorded a sharp jump to 1,066 gross rating points (GRPs) from the low of 661 GRPs, the lowest in many years, in the previous week. As a result, the leading entertainment channel Star Plus has regained its number-one spot among all Hindi GECs recording 263 GRPs (compared to 98 GRPs in the previous week where it had slipped to the third spot behind Colors and Zee TV).
During the period, the five-month-old Colors with 213 GRPs stood at the number two position behind Star Plus, while Zee TV with 189 GRPs was third, according to the data collated by ratings monitoring agency TAM media for cable homes in the Hindi-speaking markets.
Three weeks ago, this genre had delivered 1,177 GRPs before the strike by cine union workers forced the broadcasters to air only repeat episodes of serials. Later, the Mumbai terror attacks caused a further downward slide in the GRPs.
GRPs are the summation of all ratings recorded throughout the 24-hour period on each channel and are the currency used by the media planners for deciding the popularity of the channels. This in turn affects the advertising spot rates on these channels.
About a dozen-odd Hindi GECs account for 40-45 per cent of the Rs 8,000 crore advertising revenue generated on TV channels.