197 mn people in India watched PM Modi’s lockdown announcement to tackle coronavirus

A whooping 197 million people across the country tuned in to watch Prime Minister Narendra 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 on Friday, explaining the impact Of COVID -19 on television and digital media behaviour across India.

PM Modi’s address on March 24, 2020 about the complete nationwide lockdown was the biggest ever news event, superseding the Indian Premier League’s (IPL) 133 million unique viewers’ count, found the report. The number of viewing minutes of the nationwide lockdown’s announcement ran to 3,891 million minutes, the report found. The number of channels reported is 201.