For a country that considers cricket as a religion, it comes as a surprise that its viewers would prefer politics to the game. On May 16, a decisive day in the history of Indian politics, the cricket worshiping country preferred the Loksabha election results than to the Indian Premier League (IPL) matches.
According to the TAM Peoplemeter System, as many as 45 million people tuned the national Hindi news channels to watch the election results, where as around 15 million people saw the results on the English news channels. On the other hand, around 29 million viewers watched the first IPL match played between Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) versus Deccan Chargers (DC). The second match played between Mumbai Indians (MI) and Chennai Super Kings (CSK) got over 21 million viewership.
It may be mentioned here that data the IPL matches was collected from audience above four years, whereas for the election results, it came from viewers above 15 years of age.
The Television Viewer Ratings (TVR) was 10 per cent for election results coverage on Hindi news channels and 1.08 per cent for English news channels. On the other hand, the survey recorded 3.4 per cent TVR for the KKR vs DC match and 2.7 for MI vs CSK.