Colors pips Star Plus for top slot

Nearly a year after Colors lost the numero uno position to Star Plus, the channel has regained the top slot in a week that saw the share of all general entertainment channels decline amidst excitement on the cricket season.

According to data available with TAM, a television audience measurement agency, Colors increased its share in the Hindi-speaking market to 22.6 per cent from the earlier 20.8 per cent. It recorded 300 gross ratings points (GRPS), while Star Plus recorded a drop of 10 per cent in GRPs, falling to 261 points from the 291 registered a week earlier. GRP is a standard industry measure of viewership.

A spokesperson for Star India informed, “Star channels are not reaching out to one million homes serviced by IndusInd Media and Communications (Incable) since March 22. Star channels were switched off as Incable was transmitting signals beyond its authorised area of operations. That among others affected out viewership during the week.” This week, Colors has dropped total inventory (including commercial and promo time) by 16 hours from 44 hours earlier, to 28 hours.

The drop is across weekday, weekend, prime as well as non-prime dayparts. All weekday prime shows have run with a single break this week.

Ad break in prime time slots on Colors reduced by a whopping 42 per cent to five hours in Week 13 as against the 8.6 hours recorded on weekdays on an average over the last four weeks. In non-prime time slots breaks reduced by 9.6 hours to 15.1 hours. On weekend, break declined by 22 per cent to 1.8 hours in prime time and by nearly a third in non-prime slot to 5.9 hours.

Total content time has increased by 13 per cent; however, GRPs have increased only by per cent. Industry sources say without the drop in inventory, their GRPs this week would have declined by seven to eight per cent, which translates into 18-20 GRPs.

“To counter the intensifying cricket world cup mania, we adopted an aggressive approach as part of our tactical move to minimize viewership-loss to cricket. These included inventory optimization, storyline peaks in some of our fiction shows and strong movie line-ups. The GEC space is not alien to these tactics. As the ratings suggest, this appears to have paid-off for us, as we experienced minimum viewership loss during the peak of world cup cricket,” countered a Colors spokesperson.

Around two years back, Colors had halted Star Plus’ dream run as the top general entertainment channel in terms of TRPs (TV rating points) within less than a year of its launch. Then the channel remained on top for about one year until Star Plus regained the spot in March 2010. The channel had bounced back firmly to its No.1 position last year post re-branding in July and crossed 400 GRPs for several weeks

Zee TV maintained its third place with 171 GRP. Sony Entertainment and SAB followed with 120 GRP and 127 GRP, respectively.