What steps has the Broadcast Audience Research Council, which issued ratings, taken following allegations of rigging?
the story So FarInformation and Broadcasting Ministry has asked Broadcast Audience Research Council To resume the release of Television Rating Points (TRP), also known as target rating score, data. Acting on a complaint made by BARC, it was suspended in late 2020 after police discovered a rating scam. To begin with, BARC has been asked to release data for the last three months in a monthly format for a “fair and equitable representation of true trends”.
Why were the ratings withheld?
BARC, acting on a complaint dated October 8, 2020 by Mumbai Police, the viewership measurement body for television and one of its contractors, Hansa Services Pvt Ltd, said that it has TRP racket busted The three were run by news channels that were manipulating audience ratings by bribing panel houses where measurement meters were installed.
The police had named three television news channels in this case, leading to the arrest of senior-level officials of the designated channels and the former chief executive officer of BARC. BARC suspends ratings Soon after that for all news channels.
The measurement company then said it could take anywhere between 8-12 weeks to improve their statistical robustness and reduce the likelihood of intrusions into panel homes.
Why are ratings important?
Resuming viewership after more than a year is important because TV ratings are the measure on which advertising revenue is benchmarked. Indian TV commercials are valued at over ₹32,000 crore. Both advertisers and broadcasters have to pay hefty fees to subscribe to the number of viewers that come out every week. The rigging meant wrong calculations for the advertisers and loss of revenue of crores of rupees for the stakeholders.
This is not the first time that there has been news of rating rigging. In 2002–2003, former Director General of Doordarshan SY Qureshi expressed surprise how the national broadcaster with a news share of 92% did not top the TRP list brought out by Television Audience Measurement (TAM). The houses where meters were installed were being bribed, Mr. Qureshi claimed. A few years later, the news channel NDTV sues TAM’s parent companies In New York, he was accused of publishing data that was suspicious.
Eventually, TAM bowed out and BARC was established in 2010 by the Indian Broadcasting Foundation (IBF), the Advertising Agencies Association of India (AAAI) and the Indian Society of Advertisers – representatives of the media industry with all its stakeholders.
How did BARC viewership improve on TAM?
For one, the sample size was increased to over 30,000 homes, compared to 9,600 under TAM, which is considered completely inadequate for an industry of this size.
Second, with multiple stakeholders, BARC was taken up as representing the media industry.
For a while, things worked smoothly until the 2020 scandal, to help some people reflect the exact allegations leveled against Tam of falsifying data.
now what happened?
With the I&B ministry directing BARC to roll out the data, officials pointed out that BARC has taken a course correction following the recommendations of the TRP committee set up in the wake of the scam.
In line with the recommendations, BARC has appointed a monitoring mechanism and given allowances for induction of independent members in its branch.
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting constituted a committee headed by Prasar Bharati Corporation CEO Shashi Shekhar Vempati to review the existing guidelines for TV ratings and make recommendations.
The committee is expected to submit its report soon.
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