| Says
OTV director and spokesperson for Ortel BP Rath, "When
the channel was launched in December last year, it had to fight the already established
ETV Oriya, with GRP of around 500, but soon after its launch, OTV started rapidly
gaining viewership, with strong news and current affairs programme backed with
innovative entertainment content." Rath
points to figures. During week 01 of 2007, while ETV Oriya had already lost it's
GRP to a level of 235, OTV was still lower at 145 only (in CS 4+ yrs and Orissa
1 to 1 mn+ market). Now
the channel has become No 1, with week 23 showing GRP of OTV at 276, which is
just double of ETV Oriya whose GRP is at 138. TAM
has corroborated that the figures are correct. Rath
ascribes this to the channel's entertainment programmes and in-depth news coverage.
"Since the past 12 weeks OTV's performance has been steadily improving,"
Rath added. He
claims that OTV reaches all the cable households of Orissa through it's strong
distribution (which detractors say is 'strong-arm distribution') and also that
the channel is visible in most of the major towns of the country. Rath
says that OTV's recent gains are even more significant as in the prime time, both
ETV and OTV follow a similar programming pattern. "OTV
transmits it's prime time news bulletin 'Pratidin' at 7 pm, followed by the mega
serial 'Damini' and 'Uttardayee' at 7.30 pm and 8 pm respectively," Rath
says. "Similarly,
ETV Oriya gives prime time news bulletin 'Amari Orissa' at 7 pm, followed by mega
serials 'Sanskara' and 'Tulasi' at 7.30 pm and 8 pm respectively. "In
all these three time slots, OTV's performance is far ahead of ETV. For example,
in Wk 23 (last week) of 2007, OTV's ratings for these three programmes are 2.41,
5.54 and 5.68 respectively. ETV's respective ratings are 1.22, 3.01 and 2.97 respectively,"
Rath informs.
OTV has recently announced a mega mythological serial on Lord Jagannath, the deity
at the epicentre of Oriya society. "This
is going to be the biggest ever Oriya mythological project, at a cost of Rs 30
million, and will be on air in October. It will be telecast every Sunday morning
for a period of over two years. Meanwhile,
attempt to contact Bapineedu, the top man at ETV, failed because he was out of
the country. However,
ETV sources say the only correct standard of measuring the channel's success could
be arrived at if Ortel allowed ETV Oriya to be aired. | 
