NEW DELHI: NEW DELHI: Television Rating Agency Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) said Thursday that it will take a three-month hiatus from viewership estimates or ratings for news channels. The decision comes after his board proposed a technical committee review to increase current standards for measuring and reporting data, improving statistical robustness and “significantly hampering potential attempts to infiltrate panel houses.”
The decision comes on the heels of a dispute over allegations that the three-channel audience ratings, Republic TV, Fakt Marathi and Box Cinema, were manipulated.
In a statement on Thursday, BARC said the ratings suspension applies to all English, Hindi, regional and commercial news channels.
“Starting with the ‘News Genre’, BARC will stop publishing weekly individual ratings for all news channels during the exercise. This exercise is expected to last 8-12 weeks, including validation and testing under the supervision of BARC Tech Comm. BARC will continue to publish weekly audience estimates for the news genre by state and language, “BARC said.
The rating agency said the decision will initially affect all Hindi, regional and English news and business news broadcasters, but BARC will continue to provide estimates for the overall news genre each week by state and language.
While replay data will continue to be collected from affected channels, BARC will recommend a protocol for publishing individual channel data after its work with niche channel data is completed.
“The BARC technology committee will review the niche genre rule sets to improve their statistical robustness and significantly hamper potential attempts to infiltrate panel households. Beginning with the news genre, BARC would stop stating the ratings of the individual channels for news channels while this reworking of the rule set is being made. This exercise would take around 8-12 weeks, including validation and testing under the supervision of the technology committee. BARC will keep its stakeholders updated as we increase these processes, “the agency said.
The association of news broadcasters welcomed the BARC’s decision, saying that the suspension of the rating was an important step in the right direction “and that the interim period will be used to” restore the credibility of the information it collects on what that India sees “.
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