Rattled by the Mumbai Police probe that showed some TV news channels were manipulating TRPs, the Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) India has decided to pause rating system with immediate effect and undertake a review.
The BARC Board has stated that its Technical Committee would review and augment the current standards of measuring and reporting the data of niche genres to improve their statistical robustness and significantly thwart the potential attempts of infiltrating panel homes.
This exercise would cover all Hindi, Regional, English News and Business News channels, according to a press statement issued on Thursday.
Explaining the need for this move, Punit Goenka, Chairman of BARC India Board said, “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”.
Sunil Lulla, CEO, BARC India said, “We at BARC take our role in truthfully and faithfully reporting ‘What India Watches’ with the greatest sense of responsibility and work with integrity to ensure that our audience estimates (ratings) remain true to their purpose”.
He added that besides augmenting current protocols and benchmarking them with global standards, the BARC is actively exploring several options to discourage unlawful inducement of its panel home viewers and further strengthening its Code of Conduct to address viewership malpractice.
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