BARC To Pause Niche Ratings Of News Channels
Move comes days after Mumbai Police started investigating alleged TRP manipulation by Republic TV and two other media companies.
The Broadcast Audience Research Council temporarily stopped publishing weekly ratings of niche genres of Hindi, regional English and business news channels, days after the Mumbai Police started investigating alleged manipulation by Arnab Goswami's Republic TV and two other media companies.
The board of the ratings council proposed that its technical committee review and augment the current standards of measuring and reporting the data of niche genres, BARC said in a statement. The move is aimed at improving statistical robustness and to significantly hamper the potential attempts to infiltrate the panel homes—households reviewed to compile rating.
Starting with the news genre, this exercise is expected to take around 8-12 weeks including validation and testing under the supervision of BARC’s technical committee. The council will continue to release its weekly audience estimates or ratings for the news genre by state and language.
BARC's review comes after the Mumbai Police filed a first information report against Goswami's Republic TV, which claims to be India's most-watched English news channel, Fakt Marathi and Box Cinema for allegedly manipulating television rating points or TRPs.
“Given the most recent developments, the BARC board was of the opinion that a pause was necessitated to enable the industry and BARC to work closely to review its already stringent protocols and further augment them to enable the industry to focus on collaborating for growth and well-natured competitiveness,” statement quoted Punit Goenka, chairman of BARC India board, as saying.