Coronavirus: This serial will replace Ramayan on Doordarshan as show comes to end

The last episode of Ramanand Sagar's Ramayan is expected to air today on Doordarshan. In the episode, Ram will defeat Ravana thus drawing the story to a close. Prasar Bharti has announced that Luv Kush would be replacing Ramayan in the 9:00 pm timeslot from Sunday onwards.

The television show Luv Kush originally broadcasted in 1988 and was made by Ramanand Sagar, the creator of Ramayan. It was an official follow-up of Ramayan and had many actors of Ramayan reviving their roles. It is an adaption of the last book, the Uttara Kanda, of the ancient epic Ramayan. The television show Luv Kush was originally known as Uttar Ramayan when it had initially started airing in 1988.

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Shashi Shekhar, the CEO of Prasar Bharti, announced this decision by Doordarshan on Twitter. In a tweet, Shekhar wrote, "Sunday morning 9am slot will be a repeat of the finale of the main storyline of Yuddha Kanda. From Sunday night 9pm the episodes pertaining to Uttarakand that have been produced as Uttar Ramayan will start airing."

Sunday morning 9am slot will be a repeat of the finale of the main storyline of Yuddha Kanda. From Sunday night 9pm the episodes pertaining to Uttarakand that have been produced as Uttar Ramayan will start airing.

- Shashi Shekhar (@shashidigital) April 17, 2020

Shashi Shekhar later also said that the 9:00 am slot on DD National would show the repeat of the Luv Kush episode broadcasted on the previous day at 9:00 pm like it was doing for Ramayan.

Ever since DD National started broadcasting classic shows such as Ramayan and Mahabharat as part of its lockdown broadcasting schedule, the channel's TRP has gone through the roof. The inaugural episode of Ramayan had an audience of 34 million which was equivalent to a rating of 3.4 per cent. The re-telecast of the same episode in the evening garnered a viewership of 45 million Indians. The rating in the evening broadcast had increased to 5.2 per cent. These were the highest figures achieved by any Hindi GEC program since 2015 according to Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) data.

In the 13th week of the year, from March 28 to April 3, DD national had received 1.5 billion the viewership figures and has created a record for the highest viewership figures in the channel's long history. In week 14, DD National has broken its own record achieving viewership figures of 1.9 billion, according to BARC.

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