Coverage of indian parliamentry elections 2019: Content analysis of prime-time news coverage of top three news channels

During the last decade, no other mass media platform has changed the way it perceives, creates and disseminates content, as News on Indian Cable Television. Private News Channels in India have often come under severe criticism for reducing news and ground reports to prime-time panel discussions and endless sessions of allegation and counter accusations. General Elections, the biggest festival of any democracy and a huge visual spectacle are supposed to bring tremendous opportunity of varied content creation and showcasing different issues from ground reporting for understanding the real issues and concerns of voters and capturing the pulse of the nation This is also a time for them to mobilize resources for better coverage of pan nation news since there is a better inflow of revenue through political as well as government advertisement. 2019 general elections, however, saw more of views created from inside the newsroom studios than on ground coverage of news. This research picked up top 3 news channels India based on average BARC ratings and captured the prime-time news coverage during the period of general elections 2019, beginning with the announcements of dates and ending at the last round of voting (11^th March-18^th May). The content analysis of the top channels Aaj Tak, ABP News and India TV (selected based on weighted average of BARC ratings during the time period) has been categorized based on them being news dominated vs opinion dominated and ground reporting vs studio chats. Analysis of content differentiation among the channels has also been taken into consideration.