One would be forgiven if they thought that star anchor Arnab Goswami’s exit from Times Now would dent the channel’s ratings. After all, with his Newshour, Goswami was (quite literally) the face of the channel. When he wasn’t on air, promos on Times Now showed viewers teasers of previous programmes, reminding them how Goswami had comprehensively bollocked panelists in the past. When rival channels boasted about their superior viewership figures, Times Now responded with the choicest of put downs, featuring, of course, Goswami.

As reported by Newslaundry, following Goswami’s announcement that he would resign on November 1, panicked advertisers had approached Times Now to renegotiate their contracts, expecting a dip in ratings once he left. However, a look at the Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) India ratings from October 15 to December 2 reveals that the advertisers may have panicked without reason.  

Publicly-available BARC ratings for English news channels (weekly ‘impressions’ in thousands for males above 22, urban and rural) for week 42 (October 15 – October 21) and week 43 (October 22 – October 28) show Times Now clearly in the lead. This, despite the fact that Goswami did not moderate The Newshour from October 25 to Oct 31. He returned the day news of his resignation came out – November 1 – and ratings for week 44 (October 29 – November 4) registered a 37 per cent bump, even as ratings for other English news channels remained largely the same compared to the previous week. One can possibly attribute this difference to Goswami.

The government’s decision to demonetise high currency notes, announced on the evening of November 8, and Donald Trump’s victory in the American presidential election on November 9, resulted in a sharp rise in the ratings of all English news channels during week 45 (November 5 – November 11). Times Now, however, remained firmly in the lead, garnering double the number of impressions than that of CNN-News18 that week. Times Now‘s ratings further went up a notch during week 46 (November 12 – November 18), coinciding with Goswami’s final appearance on the channel on November 14.

Goswami was missing from the screen for all but one day during week 46. Yet the channel still registered an increase in ratings, which is an encouraging sign for the channel. In the two weeks after Goswami’s departure, ratings may have fallen by nearly 20 per cent but Times Now has managed to retain its lead over other channels. It is possible that Goswami’s absence caused the drop in ratings, but it’s worth noting there was a downward trend in all English news channels during weeks 47 and 48. CNN-News18 too witnessed a 20 per cent decline in ratings and NDTV 24×7‘s numbers fell by nearly nine per cent, during the same period.

Journalist and media expert Vanita Kohli-Khandekar told Newslaundry  it was too soon to “calibrate the impact” that Goswami made on . She added that to get a clear picture of how Goswami’s departure will affect the channel, one has to look at Times Now‘s “quarterly audience share”.

“News viewing spikes or falls based on events, which is why an election, one terrorist attack or a big cricket win can make the graphs go awry,” Kohli-Khandekar wrote in an email response. “It is when these spikes are added to the normal viewership that you get an average trend.”

Times Now hopes to stay the course until Goswami’s replacement, former Editor-in-Chief of NewsX, Rahul Shivshankar, takes charge. Otherwise, Shivshankar will have the unenviable task of slipping into Goswami’s shoes burdened with the responsibility of making the channel the leader among English news channels once again.