The gods smiled at the Sagar Family once again. After a gap of 33 years, The Hon. Prime Minster of India, Shri Narendra Modi’s office called up Shiv Sagar and expressed his desire to play the Ramayan series on Doordarshan, as soon as the lockdown was announced. Shiv spoke all the members of the family, and they agreed to give the series pro-gratis to the national channel since the Government said they don’t have any money to offer, and the family felt it wasn’t right to ask for monies at a time like this. There is a godown at Sagar Villa in Juhu where all the hard-disks and Umatic tapes of all the television shows are kept. Shiv went there and was surprised to find many versions, language dubs of the Ramayan series. Now like Hanuman he had to choose the right set to be given to Doordarshan, which would again re-write the history of India. The one version out of many was located and special permission sought to deliver the tapes to Doordarshan office in Worli at a time when the streets of Mumbai were deserted. The rest was history as the re-telecast came as a spiritual balm at the time when fear prevailed in the hearts of the entire world due to Covid-19. The re-telecast one hour daily created historical viewership for Doordarshan making it the number 1 network in India, beating Star Plus, Sony network, Zee etc. The series was seen and loved by a whole new generation of youngsters, and created a wave of memes, trended on twitter, And the music from the series was re-sung by many on instagram and tiktok, and youtube rang with the chymes of the title track. A super hit indeed!
- Ramayan garnered 170 million viewers in four shows over the last weekend in its new avatar, the BARC said on Thursday. BARC’s chief executive Sunil Lulla said the numbers notched up by the series was a bit surprising and called the move as a “brilliant” one by the Prasar Bharti.
- Ramayan is world’s most watched show now, breaks all records with 7.7 crore viewership. Since March 28, Doordarshan telecast Ramanand Sagar’s Ramayan on public demand. It has now become the most-watched show with 7.7 crore viewers.
- As Ramayana Broke Viewership Records In 2020, Here’s How Its TRP Would’ve Been Calculated. Ramayan by Ramanand Sagar created a world record by becoming the world’s most watched show on April 16. A total of 77 million viewers watched the show on the day.
- Shashi Shekhar, CEO of Prasar Bharati took to Twitter to share the good news. He wrote, “Thrilled to share that the re-telecast of RAMAYAN on @ddnational has garnered the highest ever rating for a Hindi GEC show since 2015 (source: @BARCIndia). This is a record of sorts for Doordarshan since BARC started TV Audience Measurement in 2015 underscoring how India is watching DD even as India fights back #CORONA #StayHomeToStaySafe
