Republic TV races to the top of the ratings chart in debut week

Arnab Goswami’s recently launched Republic TV is over the moon, thanks to latest viewership figures released by the Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) for week 19 (May 6 to May 12). Republic TV, which launched on May 6 with a string of ‘exposés’ and ‘super exclusives’, catapulted to the top of the English news genre in its first week, according to BARC data.

The publicly released figures track weekly impressions (in thousands) among males (aged 22 and above) all over India. The data shows Republic TV garnering nearly double the impressions of its biggest competitor, Goswami’s erstwhile home Times Now.
Following the release of the viewership data, Republic TV went into self-congratulation mode, conducting on-air interviews with sponsors and thanking viewers for helping the channel “create history”.

Meanwhile, the channel’s Twitter handle carried faux-inspirational messages of gratitude from Goswami.