Thursday, October 2, 2008

Drastic drop in NTV's GRPs

 

TV5 celebrated its first anniversary on Thursday. It is a moment of celebration since it has achieved a lot. It crossed NTV which was a month ahead of it . Now TV5 is targetting to cross ETV2 also. But the management has given an impression that it is the no.1 channel and almost all the guests at the anniversary function repeated the same saying that the number one channel has to retain its position. They are kept in dark and the fact is : TV5 is still only half of the number one channel TV9. To make it more clear, let us see the latest ratings of these channels during the week ending with 27th Sept.

Among the news channels, TV9 has scored 139 Gross Rating points and its market share comes to about 5%. ETV2 has 76 points and the share is 3%. It is closely followed by TV5 with 72 points and 3%. There is drastic fall in NTV's performance as its GRPs are a mere 47 which comes to 2% market share. Gemini News is just less than 0.4%. It is imminent that Mr. Chowdary look back at his news channel though he is busy launching Vanitha TV.

Coming to the Entertainment Channels, Gemini ( 27%) , Teja ( 15% ) and Maa ( 14% )  continue to be in the first three positions while ETV ( 13% ) scaled up to 4th place, pushing back Zee Telugu ( 12% ) to the 5th place.


 

Gemini News leased out

In an interesting development, the Sun Network has literally leased out Gemini News, a 24 hour news channel. All of a sudden the team of the lessees entered the premises yesterday ( 1st October ) and took control of the department, to the utter shock and dismay of the existing staff members. It is not clear as to how the management wants to settle the accounts of the present staff, including those who have been serving the organisation for ten years, eversince the news department started. The present arrangement, as per the information available is that the new organisation has to bear the maintenance charges including salaries and has to give Sun Network a monthly compensation of Rs. 20 lakhs. Thus the marketing of the channel will also be taken care by thenew team


However, the staff members got panick and started calling their Hyderabad office about their future. As a damage control exercise, Mr. Kiran ( Director/CEO ) called each and every reporter over phone and informed that the arrangement is basically aimed at marketing and at the same time " some feature stories as value addition " will be taken care of by the new team. However, the bewildered staff are in no mood to accept this theory.