Marooned Mumbai was a bonanza for news channels

Mumbai: The sight of Mumbaikars wading through chest-high water, cars submerged, roof high water, trains stalled in water, flooded apartments and other assorted sights seems to have kept the entire country glued to television sets. And none other than the innumerable news channels that spew out monotonously boring and identical news made capital of the sights of Mumbai flooded.

According to TAM Media Research, which tracks viewership in cities and towns with a population of over 1 lakh, the record rains in Mumbai in the last week of July pushed news viewing on television upwards, not only in the city but also elsewhere in the country.

The reports said that during the last week of July, viewers increased their dose of news by 57 per cent, that is from 60 minutes daily to 94 minutes.

The report said the viewership interest of the Mumbai floods was the same as that seen during last year's tsunami. The share of news channels in the top six cities was 11 per cent in both the cases.

The share of the news channels doubled in that week as mass entertainment channels took a hit. However, Mumbai experienced a whopping 55 per cent drop in TV viewership on the worst day of the rains (July 26), thanks largely to prolonged power cuts and huge traffic jams that left umbai marooned.