The three representatives of the Broadcaster Audience Research Council (BARC) were not fazed by Union Minister for Communication and Information Technology Ravi Shankar Prasad’s criticism of the year-old ratings system at Wednesday’s inaugural session of FICCI-FRAMES 2016.
Prasad had said, “I am not happy with the TV ratings system. I never approved of TAM and I am not very impressed by the new alternative either. How can a few hundred boxes tell me which show is number one? Something should be done to make the television ratings more accurate.”
In fact, Partho Dasgupta, CEO BARC, refuted the above at today’s interactive session called Lord of the Ratings-the BARC order, and said that they had the world’s largest sampling data at 96 thousand people. (see box interview). His co-panellists, Raj Nayak, CEO Colors, and Shashi Sinha, CEO IPG Mediabrands, both agreed that in the short time-frame that BARC was set up, its efforts have been good. “The global fraternity has been more than complimentary unlike the` Indian fraternity. It has been a learning curve so far. Yes the eco-system feels that it could have been faster but they have done well so far,” said Sinha, leading the panel discussion’s unanimous view on this issue.
Addressing the issue of volatility of data, specially as compared to the earlier TAM, Dasgupta said consumers do not behave in the same way day in and day out and therefore data will change with supply and demand. “We give the data the way it is and relative error is part of the system because it is a sample. Currently, the 20,000 homes comes out of the India census study. In the near future, the panel homes will be based on Broadcast India’s survey, one of the biggest study being undertaken by us, which is covering over 3 lakh individuals and which will be launched soon,” said Dasgupta.
Unnerved by the volatility which pushes broadcasters in fierce competition with each other and weekly ratings push them into top slots or to the bottom of the heap, Raj Nayak said that it was important for broadcasters to co-relate to things happenings.
“Breaking news or cricket, especially where India is playing, affects GEC’s a little, but the impact is more so for channels which are niche and have a smaller number of viewers. These are ones which need to go on a four-week rolling or average,” he suggested. The Colors CEO also stuck his neck out by saying that broadcasters need to sell rural and urban advertising separately. This issue, he reasoned, comes up since BARC data now covers rural and smaller towns called LC1 as well and the ratings of most broadcasters have changed because of the same.
Nayak also stressed that Free-to-air channels or FTA’s should be kept separately. “Broadcasters are basically content curators. The need of the hour is to have an Indian Media Foundation: where BARC will be measuring everything across platforms.
BARC began releasing ratings last year. At that time, TAM too existed. This year the two combined forces and from March 1, only BARC releases television viewership data. BARC is a joint industry body.
Guest Author
Nandini Raghavendra has been tracking the media and entertainment space for The Economic Times for over 15 years. She is currently a consultant with Ernst & Young
