The television viewership measurement body BARC on Monday announced that the individual news channels ratings will be released for the public starting from March 17. The announcement came after instruction from The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting in January to release TRP data of news channels with immediate effect.
In a statement, BARC India welcomed MIB’s directive to resume the release of data for individual news channels. The body will be reaching out to its constituents to inform and educate them about the details of the augmented data reporting standards which entails the reporting of audience estimates for news and special interest genre channels on a four-week rolling average basis.
As used to happen earlier, the data will be released regularly every week on Thursdays for all channels. All viewership data will be published on the same YUMI platform that is used by subscribers. BARC assured that the Augmented Data Reporting Standards have been rigorously tested over several months and are now industry-ready for rollout.
The individual TRP of news channels will resume with effect from Week 10, 2022. As directed by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, BARC India will also publish the previous 13 weeks data before the week of resumption of TRP data. News channels are allowed to opt-out of the previous 13 weeks data as well and past data of those channels will not be made available.
BARC had suspended publishing news ratings in October 2020 after the Mumbai police unearthed a TRP scam in which a few media houses allegedly bribed homeowners to “rig” their TV ratings. Since then it waited for a pending investigation and review based on which the agency took several measures to ensure credibility of its data before resuming publishing TRP data of news channels.
