How News Channels Viewership Grew by 100% After #PulwamaTerrorAttack

In an earlier post, we had discussed how some of the journalists act against the nation and society as they almost facilitate the terror attacks.

Why would such a thing happen?

Well, a friend – Bharat Kumar Mohan, who runs the start-up Sensara – who monitors the TV and media behavior in real time shared an interesting update on Linkedin.

The switch-ins (plotted by the minute for the last 7 days) news channels monitored by his organization show a radical acceleration after the Pulwama Attack.  In fact, there is a 100% increase in viewership!

As the news channels keep feeding more and more stuff, sometimes even fake and controversial, viewers keep coming back for more and more information in the days after the attack.

It is not as if people are not sleeping due to this and awake to capture every detail.  They sleep – as the graph shows – and then wake up and carry on their intense viewing!

Very interestingly, we also observed that 62% of the entire TV audience had caught up on a news channel after the incident. Normally, only 48% of the regular TV audience ever watches a news channel.

People want more and more information, and even when there is no new information, they want to keep the channel on in the hope of something new specifically when there is so much anticipation!

He shares the graph which shows the whole pattern by the minute for last 7 days – before the Pulwama Attack and after that.  It is indeed very revealing!

In short, as crude as it may sound – terror attacks are great business for news channels.

People switch in from their regular entertainment channels to news – sometimes perhaps with very similar reasons.