Is the DD's claim of Ramayan breaking viewership record fake?

Last month, the mythological fans were going gaga over DD Ramayana smashing the viewership records and becoming the most-watched show. As per the details, Smashing all the records made by the final episode of "Game of Thrones", that was 19.3 million, Ramayana was watched by 77 million (7.7 crores) people across the globe.

But now the latest news surfaced that overwhelmed in the ocean of 'Bhakti' the makers have made false claims of the Ramayana being the most-watched show. As per the reports by Amar Ujala, one of the senior-most officials of BARC, an Indian organisation for TV audience measurement data collection has revealed that they have not made any such claims.

'BARC never communicated any claims of making world record with Doordarshan'

According to the reports, Romil Ramgadhiya has said that BARC has never claimed that DD Ramayana has made any world record. The official said, "BARC never communicated any claims of making world record with Doordarshan. All we did was to present the statistics along with those of 16th April 2020, to elucidate that the country's audiences hadn't shown such unprecedented interest for any daily soap or event in the last 5 year."

DD shared the news of Ramayan smashing the records through their twitter handle and wrote, "Rebroadcast of Ramayana on Doordarshan smashes viewership records worldwide, the show becomes most-watched entertainment show in the world with 7.7 crore viewers on 16th of April."

DD's claims are based on 'GLANCE' report

Doordarshan's claim is based on the report given by TV rating agency Glance, which provides a rating for approximately over 7000 TV channels broadcasted in about 100 countries.

One of its report 'One TV Year in the World' says that Ramayan has outperformed every other television show in terms of audience engagement. It is however interesting to note that the above-mentioned report is only for the year 2018 and there's no information for the year preceding or succeeding the one for which it has claimed.

Reportedly, when the CEO of Prasar Bharti Mr Shashi Shekhar was asked about the same, he gave an ambiguous response. He said, "We are well aware that apart from the reported TV ratings, there is a large chunk of the population who viewed the show on mobile as well as other media platforms. If we include all these numbers then the total viewership count of' Ramayan' will easily cross 200 million (20 crore)."