Doordarshan India (DD), following Times Now’s footsteps, has become the second channel to overtake Republic TV in the English News genre for the fifth week in the period ending on 1 February, the Television Post reports citing Broadcast Audience Research Council India (BARC) data.

DD India was recently revamped as an English News channel, and it secured the top spot after having entered the top five in the genre for the first time in the third week of January. The channel has now taken a massive lead over its nearest rival in weekly impressions.

The Prasar Bharti’s news channels has 1.5 million weekly impressions, double that of Republic TV’s impressions at 0.72 million. Times Now holds the third position with 0.6 million weekly impressions, followed by India Today TV and CNN-News 18 with 0.36 million weekly impressions and 0.3 million weekly impressions respectively.

The Arnab Goswami-promoted channel was launched in May 2017, and since then was unchallenged at the top of the English News genre until Times Now broke its monopoly in the 31st week of 2018.

All news channels aired special programmes during the interim budget, leading to a spike in weekly impressions. The top five in the Hindi News Channel genre are unchanged despite the increase in weekly impressions.

In the English Business News genre, CNBC-TV18’s weekly impressions doubled from 0.33 million, in week four to 0.79 million. Further, ET Now also witnessed an increase by three times to reach 0.5 million. Among other channels, BTVI also saw a slight increase, while CNBC-TV Prime HD’s weekly impressions saw a downfall.

Hindi Business News channels CNBC Awaaz and Zee Business also saw an surge in weekly impressions.