Suspended since TRP case, BARC to resume news ratings next month

Seventeen months after it suspended data for individual news channels, the Broadcast Audience Research Council on Monday said that it will resume issuing the data on March 17, the Press Trust of India reported.

The announcement came almost a month after the Union Ministry of Information and Broadcasting had said that it had given a directive to resume the release of data for individual news channels with immediate effect.

In October 2020, BARC had “temporarily suspended” the ratings on the news genre, following an alleged TRP scam that allegedly involved top executives from Republic TV. The Mumbai police had alleged that few media houses bribed homeowners to “rig” their TV ratings. At the time, BARC said it planned to “review and augment the current standards”.

Citing the ministry directive, the TV ratings body said that it would release the data on March 17 as per the Augmented Data Reporting Standards for News and Special Interests genre, and that clients have been communicated about the same.

In a statement, the BARC said, “BARC India is currently working towards ensuring the seamless release of individual news channel data and intends to commence release with effect from our reporting Week 10, 2022.”

All the viewership data would be published on the same YUMI platform that all its subscribers use, according to the BARC statement, which further stated, “We believe we have a statistically sound and effective solution which helps augment the robustness of the data and reporting, which we had set out to do.”