Satyamev Jayate ratings dip on STAR Plus

Aamir Khan's talk show, Satyamev Jayate (SMJ), which airs across channels on Star India's broadcast network, has seen a drop in ratings on Star Plus after launching with impressive numbers.

SMJ launched its third leg on October 5, with a viewership of 4.9 million. However, the show's viewership dwindled significantly in the second week to 2.4 million and in the third week to 2.1 million. This is a new trend for the show, when compared to its performance in the March 2014 edition. While the show started off with a similar rating - 4.8 million, the consequent weeks held better viewership numbers at 4.1 million and 3.5 million (for the March 2014 instalment). These ratings are for the episodes aired on STAR Plus. The second season of the show was divided into two tranches. The first was aired in March this year and the second is currently on air.
 

When asked about the decline in ratings on STAR Plus for the October edition, the channel preferred to look at the show's viewership numbers across all the channels it is aired on, which include STAR Utsav, STAR Pravah, STAR World, STAR Vijay, Asianet, ETV Telugu and Doordarshan.

"Satyamev Jayate even this season continues to garner healthy viewership with aggregate reach of 24.8 crore Indians so far, the average all-India viewership (CS 4+) for this season stands at 4.9 million viewers," an official STAR India spokesperson. The figures mentioned above are for the original and repeat telecasts across the channels mentioned. The spokesperson elaborated that since the start of the show, it had been a practice to see the show's ratings in a more holistic manner. "We have disaggregated the ratings since the start of the show (in terms of individual channel ratings) and so we consider the ratings across all the telecasting channels, including DD. The idea of multi-language and multi-channel telecast is that the show should reach as many people as possible. We agree that if we did not have the multi-language feeds, the ratings on STAR Plus would have been much more. But that is not the point of the show. Given its content and ideology, SMJ targets viewers across languages, geographies and socio-economic backgrounds," he added.

Industry estimates peg the cost of the show at close to Rs 6 crore per episode and ad rates of Rs 7-8 lakh for a 10 second spot. The sponsor on the show also does not come cheap with the title sponsor Airtel estimated to have shelled out Rs 18 crore while Axis Bank is coughing up Rs 13 crore to be associated with the show. In this context, the show's ratings could be a cause of worry. Mohit Beotra, chief brand officer, Bharti Airtel India, says, "Our reason for associating with Satyamev Jayate is two-fold. The first is that the show drives a high level of engagement with its viewers, which is evident in the chatter on social media. Secondly, the show, through Aamir and its content, projects certain values which are very much aligned with the values promoted by Airtel. It makes a good brand fit for the show and Airtel."

When asked about the drop in ratings, he says that no intimation has been received by Airtel of a drastic drop, but the matter of viewership will be discussed while evaluating the association.

"We have not seen anything so alarming in terms of ratings as of now. Yes we, like any advertiser, would love the ratings to be higher, but for a Sunday morning show and for the content it represents, the ratings are not dismal. But if there is a significant declining trend, we would obviously weigh it in and rethink (the association) when we do the post season analysis. But as of now, we see no reason to worry. We had signed up for the second season and it was then divided into two tranches. So after this tranche gets done, we'll be evaluating the performance," he explains.

The spokesperson from STAR said, "Our sponsors are the same across the channels. So when seen as a whole, the aggregate viewership gives our commercial partners value for the money spent."

Planners also believe that for a show that is present on television, the advertisers will look for eyeballs to justify their investment on the property. "A consistent and drastic decline in the show's ratings means either the content lacks the engaging ability week on week or some amount of fatigue has set in. What is alarming is that this is just the third instalment of the show. In case of other non-fiction shows like Bigg Boss and Kaun Banega Crorepati, the shows are in their eighth season and fatigue is expected," says a planner involved with media buying on the show.

The case of viewer fatigue is not a new one and has been seen in properties in the fiction and non-fiction space. In case of non-fiction, shows like Kaun Banega Crorepati (on Multi Screen Media's Sony Entertainment Television) and Bigg Boss (on Viacom18's Colors) launched with impressive ratings (8.9 million and 7.6 million viewers, respectively), and the episodes during the week plateaued at around 3-3.5 million viewers.

In case of the Hero ISL too, the ratings have fallen in the second week to 0.7 from 0.85 in the first week, according to media reports. Star India, however, maintains that the reach figures continue to be encouraging for the tournament.

"In the opening week, 170 million viewers (extrapolated TAM reach) watched Hero ISL. In week two, another 60 million viewers have sampled the league, taking the extrapolated reach to 232 million in week two which is a 35 per cent increase from week one. This shows continued traction and viewership interest in the league. Ratings for week two have been 90 per cent of week one ratings (removing for the opening night impact) which is on anticipated lines," the broadcast network said in a statement.