Aroon Purie concerned over the measurement of TV viewership

After Zee Media withdrew from the Broadcast Audience Research Council India (BARC), Aroon Purie of the India Today Group stated that he, too, has reservations about how TV viewing is measured.

Purie, who was present in Mumbai in order to deliver the AAAI Subhas Ghosal Memorial Lecture, spoke on the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority of India’s rules governing channel pricing and the condition of Indian television journalism.

Purie stated: “We have issues regarding TV audience measurement". He stated that in order to address these issues, the India Today Group is in communication with BARC. He continued “Continuous updating and improvement are necessary for any industry body. In a market of size, predicting TV viewership can be difficult. We must consider our faults and decide what has to be eliminated.”

New Delhi Television (NDTV) recently exited the BARC. The company that operates news channels in English and Hindi believed that the sample size for measuring needed to be expanded. Zee Media has cancelled its TV viewership measurement service membership due to BARC’s measurement of landing page views and is looking for a larger sample size.

For measuring a TV viewership universe of 210 million TV homes, BARC uses a sample size of 44,000 metres (2021).

Purie argued against the TRAI’s tariff orders to control TV channel pricing. He declared: “It appears that the current administration believes that our citizens’ access to affordable cable service is a constitutional right. Political populism is all that this is." The rule to keep rates low, according to Purie, leads to a heavy reliance on advertising because the share of subscription revenue is far lower than international standards.

In reference to the poor chances for monetizing content that is delivered through digital platforms, Poorie noted: “Charging for content on digital platforms is a hefty ask; it is a lengthy haul.” He commented on how businesses spend a lot of money producing content for the digital space, saying “Companies are burning dollars to chase cents.”