India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed on March 24th ordering all 1.3 billion people in the country to stay inside their homes for three weeks starting last Wednesday which is the biggest and most severe action undertaken anywhere to stop the spread of the coronavirus.
Guess what, a mammoth 197 million people across the country tuned in to watch Modi’s address to the country announcing a complete lockdown in the country to tackle the coronavirus pandemic. This was revealed by a report released by Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) India and Nielsen, explaining the impact Of COVID -19 on television and digital media behavior across India.
This was the biggest ever news event, superseding the Indian Premier League’s (IPL) 133 million unique viewers’ count. The number of viewing minutes of the nationwide lockdown’s announcement ran to 3,891 million minutes. The number of channels reported is 201.