The re-telecast of Ramayan appears to have yielded rich dividends for Doordarshan with the provisional numbers indicating a surge in viewership of the state-owned broadcaster.
According to provisional data with the Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC)-Nielsen, the Ramayan episode aired on DD National Sunday evening recorded the highest viewership by any show since 2015 in the Hindi General Entertainment Channel category. The BARC only began collating such data in 2015.
Two episodes of Ramayan are being telecast every day, at 9 am and 9 pm.
The numbers, however, are provisional and are based on only the first two days of the telecast — Saturday and Sunday. The viewership figures for the week, which will reflect the growth in DD National's viewership since the show began, will be released by BARC next Thursday.
The provisional figures revealed that the viewership for Ramayan peaked on Sunday evening, with figures touching 51 million (5.1 crore) viewers from 34 million (3.4 crore) viewers on Saturday morning when the first episode of the series was aired. The show was also the highest rated in urban areas, including the metropolis'.
The show garnered 45 million (4.5 crore) viewers on Saturday evening and 40 million (4 crore) viewers on Sunday morning.
In all, the four episodes of Ramayan on Saturday and Sunday garnered an average of 28.7 million ( 2.87 crore) impressions and 6.9 billion (690 crore) viewing minutes.
The data is for the Hindi speaking markets band.
DD's YouTube viewership surges as well
Doordarshan's re-telecast of both Ramayan along with a series of other iconic series, such as Mahabharat, Circus and Byomkesh Bakshi, began Saturday and a specific number of episodes of all shows will be aired during the 21-day lockdown period.
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