Resumption of Television Audience Measurement Ratings for ‘News Genre’ by BARC

Tags: National News

The ministry of information and broadcasting has asked the Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) to resume the release of Television Rating Points (TRPs) for news channels and sought the release of the data of the last three months for a “fair and equitable representation of true trends”.

• The resumption comes after over a year of TRPs being suspended following allegations of manipulation of ratings that emerged in October 2020. The Mumbai Police arrested at least five people over an alleged TRP scam
• As the controversy grew at the time, the Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC), which provides TRP data, announced a three-month long suspension of weekly ratings of news channels across languages.
• The ministry, has also set up a working group under the chairmanship of the CEO, Prasar Bharati, Shashi Shekhar Vempati for the consideration of leveraging the Return Path Data (RPD) capabilities for the use of TRP services, as also recommended by TRAI and the TRP Committee Report.

BARC

BARC (Broadcast Audience Research Council) India is a joint industry body, which includes broadcasters, advertisers, and advertising and media agencies. 

• It was set up to design, commission, supervise and own an accurate, reliable and timely television audience measurement system for India. It is the world's largest television measurement science industry body based in Mumbai..
• It analyses the viewership habits of over 210 million TV households which makes it the world's largest television audience measurement service. Its measurement system is based on a sample of 40,000 "panel homes”
• It functions as per the recommendations of the TRAI (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India).
• Chairman - Punit Goenka
• CEO - Nakul Chopra