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Our Bureau

Mumbai, May 14 With IPL viewers coming across genres, sports and regional general entertainment channels (GECs) together lost 71 per cent viewership to the tournament’s league matches, states a report by IMX (Indian Media Exchange), the media buying unit of Zenith Optimedia and Starcom.

Sports channels telecasting events such as ICL (Zee and Ten Sports) and India-South Africa test series (Neo Sports), lost 34 per cent viewers who shifted to IPL once the earlier tournaments ended. Regional GECs such as Sun, Eenadu, Kaliagnar and Asianet lost viewers by 37 per cent to IPL. However, some have now started regaining lost ground.

The other genres to lose share were the regional movies and Hindi news channels — a loss of 7 per cent each in terms of viewership. The sundry channels, including religious and cable channels, lost 12 per cent to IPL, according to the report. Busting the myth that only GEC channels remained affected during prime time when the IPL matches were played, the IMX report states that the Hindi GEC lost just about 0.5 per cent and that Paanchvi Paas did not result in any gain for Star Plus.

The other key players within the Hindi movies genre such as Zee Cinema, Star Gold, Filmy did not lose any ground to IPL. In fact, Zee Cinema gained and so did new entrant UTV Movies, which held on to its share before the beginning of the IPL matches. According to Mr Shyam Shankar, President, IMX, “Currently, the channel share of GECs is marginally affected, although the gap in TRPs is still large; but as the knockout rounds begin, the GEC channels are likely to get more affected. It is the female audience which is going to make the difference, as they are the ones who are likely to affect the GEC channels more than the others as they switch to watching the IPL matches.”

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