Top Hindi news channels gave Modi and Shah 2.5x the airtime of Rahul and Priyanka

Data on television airtime between April 2 and 28 suggests that news channels gave far more coverage to the Bharatiya Janata Party’s campaign than to its rivals. According to the analysis, the 11 leading Hindi news channels gave more than 850 hours of airtime, combined, to BJP president Amit Shah and Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The figures

The findings were based on data from the Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) published in a Hindi daily.

• Modi received 722 hours and Shah 123 hours.
• The two leading Congress campaigners, party president Rahul Gandhi and his sister Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, together received 335 hours.
• Rahul’s share was 251 hours, 36 minutes and 45 seconds; Priyanka’s was 84 hours, 20 minutes and five seconds.

Over the same period Modi addressed 64 rallies and Rahul 65, yet Modi drew much more attention from the channels, whose focus on the Prime Minister appears to help their ratings. When Modi held a roadshow before filing his nomination in Varanasi on April 25, channels broadcast live for up to three hours, while reporters’ interactions with Rahul during his campaign took up only 25 minutes of airtime.

Interviews and advertising

Modi’s recent non-political interview with actor Akshay Kumar was aired by all these channels and reached 1.7 crore viewers, according to the data. Prasoon Joshi’s interview of Modi in April 2018 had 2.5 crore viewers, but viewers stayed with the Akshay Kumar conversation longer, and it recorded 52 lakh impressions against 35 lakh for Joshi’s ‘Bharat ki Baat’.

BARC data also shows that since last November the BJP has been the biggest advertiser on television, displacing a pan masala brand, with Netflix and the travel site Trivago behind it.

A different view

Abhinandan Sekhri of Newslaundry argued that the question of airtime was beside the point, because apart from some variation most parties get similar time; the problem, he said, was that opposition parties were presented in a lopsided way.

See also: election news.

Originally published on 15 May 2019. Rewritten on 9 October 2026.

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