IPL Vs IPL

The summer of 2009 was truly special for televison viewers. The two biggest television events of India took place at the same time. The Indian Premier League in South Africa & the Indian Political League (Elections 2009) kept the audience enthralled from April to May. What made this even more interesting was the fact that, there was a huge clash between the two in March, which saw IPL shifting to South Africa due to security concerns. There was a huge debate on whether it was the right decision to move IPL out of India. It was interesing to see both the reality events clash with each other on the small screen. But who won this battle?



To judge the winner of the television battle would be tough, if we go by the day to day data for both the events.But if we pick up the two most important days for both the events- 16th May, the day elections results were announced & 24th May, the day IPL 2 final was played, then it would be a fair comparison. There are broadly two parameters to judge the success of a event/program on television- 1) Total viewership – the total number of people that tuned in to catch the event & 2) TVR ( Televison Viewership Rating)- This also includes the ‘amount of time spend’ by the audience watching the event. From a commercial perspective, TVR is more important for an advertiser than the total viewership.

The total viewership for Election 2009 results on 16th May, according to, TAM Peoplemeter System (Televison Viewership Agency) was 60 million. Close to 45 million watched the coverage on Hindi news channels, while the remaining 15 million witnessed the political drama unfolding on English news channels. On the otherhand, the IPL 2 final on 24th May, according to aMap (Televison Viewership Agency) was 11.7 million. This was higher than last year’s IPL final.



The TVR for Election 2009 final (16th May) was 10% on Hindi channels & 1.08% on English channels. The combined total for both Hindi & English news channels comes up to 11.08%. Now, the TVR for IPL 2 grand final was 8.3%, slightly lower than last year’s IPL final.Surprisingly for many, Election 2009 emerged as the clear winner in the television battle.
Though one major difference between the two remains that, Elections 2009 threw one clear winner, in the form of UPA. IPL 2, on the other hand had two winners- Deccan Chargers & Lalit Modi (Thanks to the moolah IPL 2 earned).


Published on - http://behindindia.com/india-news-stories/article/ipl-03-06-09-1.html