Amidst the tug-of-war between Set Max and news channels in the IPL-election season to grab eyeballs, it is the prime time programmes of top general entertainment channels, that witnessed the maximum viewership erosion. The prime time programmes on Colors, the second largest player in the GEC market, lost around 25% viewership on an average in the first three weeks of May, compared to the average viewership of two week period preceding the commencement of IPL matches.

The TV ratings for most viewed programmes on Star Plus, the top player in the GEC segment and Zee TV, the third most watched GEC, fell around 15 to 18%, an internal study of Lodestar Universal shows. ?A viewership fall of around 20% for the prime time programmes of GECs doesn?t come as a surprise in view of last year?s experience,? said Nandini Dias, COO, Lodestar Universal, when asked to comment on the trends.

All major movie channels with the exception of Zee Cinema recorded a dip in viewership in the range of 5 to 12%. While Star Gold lost 5% viewers in the above period, TV ratings for UTV Movies and Filmy declined 7% and 12% respectively. The trend is well entrenched in the regional markets as well. With the exception of Star Ananda, most Bengali channels that include Zee Bangla (17%), ETV Bangla (20%), Aakaash (4%) show a clear decrease in television ratings for the period while Set Max witnessed a 592% jump in West Bengal for the same period.

The results are more pronounced for the Marathi market as all top channels like Zee Marathi, Star Pravah, Star Majha, ETV Marathi, Mi Marathi have seen reduced TV rating in the range of 18 to 36%. In the same period, Set Max gained 385% in the Marathi market. The Tamil market is the only language market, where IPL hasn?t been able to?wean the?audience?s?attention with from the most-watched channel Sun TV?which suffered a marginal dip of 2.5% even as other channels such as KTV and Kalaignar TV saw a decline of 16 to 25%. In the Kannada market, Udaya TV and Udaya Movie, the two most watched channels, lost only 5 to 7% of viewership, where as in the Malayalam market, Asianet and Surya TV were down 6% and 5% respectively.

The Telugu market saw Gemini TV losing about 11% TV rating and Eenadu TV losing 16% in the comparable period.?For the corresponding period, the gains that Set Max made in South (where it enjoyed very little popularity before IPL matches) was in the range of 660 to 2375%. The figures seem magnified as the growth in viewership happened over a very low base of Set Max viewership. According to sources, the top GECs had also anticipated an IPL seasonal viewership erosion of around 20 to 25%.