File photo of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Average user time spent on news apps also jumped by 76% during the same period. Additionally, there has been a 34% spike in daily average reach for the group.
- News18.com
- Last Updated: March 30, 2020, 3:49 PM IST
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New Delhi: Network18 group has hit the 10 crore-mark in terms of its daily viewers, according to a joint study by BARC-Nielsen on the content consumption trends during the lockdown. It says that news reach on television has spiked by 17% and overall news impressions are up by 57%.
Average user time spent on news apps also jumped by 76% during the same period. Additionally, there has been a 34% spike in daily average reach for the group.
BARC India CEO Sunil Lulla said, “TV news viewership will grow as the lockdown continues. People may be getting their news on mobile but are checking with TV for veracity. Growth of non-primetime has been more than that of primetime.”
BARC and Nielsen have jointly put together a report to understand the changes in consumption behaviours of TV and smartphones, respectively, given the extraordinary situation surrounding the COVID pandemic and its fallout.
Further reports will be released on a weekly basis.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s address to the nation on March 24 announcing a 21-day lockdown saw higher unique visitors than the 2019 Indian Premier League (IPL) final, which had recorded 133 million unique viewers.
According to data by BARC-Nielsen, as many as 197 million people viewed Modi’s 30-minute televised address on 201 TV channels, garnering 3,891 million viewing minutes.
The viewership on TV for the March 24 announcement is the highest so far and is considered the biggest-ever news event.
Other events like last year’s Article 370 announcement on August 8, which aired on as many as 163 channels, saw 65 million people viewing the telecast for 934 million total viewing minutes.
Source: News18