Temple row fuels right-wing channel’s growth in Kerala
ACCORDING TO WEEK 46 DATA RELEASED BY BARC, MARKET LEADER ASIANET NEWS HAD 53,461 IMPRESSIONS FOLLOWED BY JANAM TV WITH 30,950
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The unlikely winner in the standoff between the Kerala government and protestors over Sabarimala is a right-leaning television channel called ‘Janam TV’. Within a month’s time, the channel has climbed the charts to reach the number two slot, behind only Asianet News, owned by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Rajya Sabha member of Parliament Rajeev Chandrasekhar.
According to BARC figures, three-and-a-half-year-old channel has given a dozen-odd Malayalam news channels a run for their money with its coverage of Sabarimala issue, coming from nowhere in terms of ratings to occupy number two slot.
According to Week 46 data released by BARC, market leader Asianet News had 53,461 impressions followed by Janam with 30,950 and Manorama News with 29,805. According to W39 data — before Sabarimala became an issue, Janam TV’s impressions were as low as 2,950. Impressions refer to the number of individuals in thousands of a target audience who viewed an event, averaged across minutes as per BARC, the country’s TV viewership monitoring agency. BARC doesn’t share absolute viewership numbers, so these are all averages. So, 53,461 impressions for Asianet News, 30,950 impressions for Janam, and 29,805 for Manorama News are the weekly average viewership numbers for the three channels. In September, Supreme Court ruled that women of all ages be allowed to worship at the hilltop shrine, setting aside an ancient tradition that barred women of menstruating age from entering the shrine. Enraged traditionalists protested against ruling, which Kerala’s Left Democratic Front government vowed to uphold. “From day one we have been consistent with our position. We coined a slogan, ‘We are with devotees’ and it clicked. We have taken a vow that we will present news as it is without any slant or taking a position,” said Janam TV’s chief editor G K Suresh Babu.