Republic vs Aaj Tak vs NDTV: Know who is winning the online TRP war

New Delhi: As the country’s leading news channels are fighting TRP war to claim their numerouno position, The420 along with Noida based NGO Root64 Infosec Research Foundation scanned the online world to ascertain who has taken the lead.

While the entire ‘TRP scam’ has raised doubt over the mechanism to check channels popularity, we collected reliable and transparent data available online to check who dominates the news industry.

Live Viewership

In terms of live viewership on YouTube, Arnab Goswami led Republic Bharat takes a huge lead. The channel with 4.9 million subscribers had a live viewership of 6,300 at 10:47 am on October 14.

Republic Bharat
Subscribers: 4.7 M
Live Viewer: 6.3K
Date/Time : October 14 at 10:47AM

Securing second positing NDTV India had 4,400 live viewers at the same time. NDTV has a double subscriber base of 9 million to that of Republic Bharat on YouTube.

NDTV India
Subscribers: 9 M
Live Viewership: 4.4 K
Date/Time : October 14 at 10:49AM

Coming third in the list is Aaj Tak which has the highest subscriber base of 41.9 million subscribers, almost 10 times more than Republic. But the Hindi news channel by India Today group had only 4,300 people watching their feed on YouTube.

Aaj Tak
Subscribers: 41.9 M
Live Viewership: 4.3K
Date/Time : 14th Oct at 10:48AM

A similar data was scanned at 1:40 pm which showed that Republic Bharat has live watching of 9,900 while these numbers stood 6,500 viewers for Aaj Tak and only 3,300 for NDTV India.

These data were taken from YouTube which is available in the public domain and are non-tamperable.

“Aaj Tak has 10 times more subscribers while NDTV has double numbers but both the channels are getting 30 per cent less viewership that Republic Bharat. Republic with just 4.7 million subscribers is actually leading even at that those time when Arnab, who is the face of the channel is not on screen. This clearly shows that Aaj Tak has lost the loyalty of its viewers who have shifted to other channels,” said Amit Dubey, Chief Mentor, Root64 Infosec Research Foundation. 

Monthly viewership and new subscribers

The analysis of YouTube data shows that Aaj Tak had a widespread reach to 1,500 million views in the month of May this year but this share has now squeezed to one-fourth. The channel started by Aroon Purie is now getting 350 million views per month.

The YouTube channel of Aaj Tak which has seen the addition of 5 million subscribers per month, could now manage to get just 4 lakh new subscribers in September 2020.

Monthly views of Aaj Tak on YouTube

While monthly video views of NDTV touched the heights of 100 million views has plunged since May 2020 and has reached to around 60 million per month. NDTV which was adding 3 – 4 lakh subscribers per month has reduced to 1.80 lakh new subscribers in September.

Monthly views of NDTV India on YouTube

The big winner in this race is Republic Bharat. The channel which was getting 100 million views per month on YouTube till August 2020 has seen a huge spike which in the month of September as it has gained traction of 300 million views monthly. Exponential growth was seen in terms of new subscribers as around 13 lakh new subscribers connected with the channel digitally in the month of September. A quick scan of the number of views on latest videos also shows that Republic is ahead by a huge margin.

Monthly views of NDTV India on YouTube

All the major channels have their YouTube channel where they telecast their live feeds along with other news reports and special stories. With the growth of the internet in India, channels have realized the true potential of digital platform and are investing heavily to drive their online traffic.

The online trend clearly shows that Republic Bharat has taken a lead on the digital world. As the famous saying goes – the customer is king, which is clearly, in this case, is connected with Republic more than any other news channels.

Tweets related to TRP war

Researchers of Root64 analyzed over 1 lakh tweet between October 8-12 related to hashtags – #RepublicFightsBack , #RepublicBharat, #RepublicTRPChor, #RepublicTV and #RepublicCheatsBharat and found over 64 per cent of such tweets originated from journalists and media organizations.

The online campaign hardly had any impact of netizens at large as only media community was talking about the issue.