BARC has done a good job in restoring TV news ratings credibility

As per top officials in Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, the Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) has increased the size of panel homes from about 30,000 in 2017 to 55,000 in December 2022.

The number of panel meters installed in audience homes plays a crucial role in improving the accuracy of TV viewership data. India's largest viewership data collection agency is now planning to increase the installed meter count to around 65,000 over the next three years. 

The data was released by the Information & Broadcasting ministry in response to a query whether viewership data for news genre released by BARC was suspended, if yes, has the union government implemented any new steps to collect viewership data by the BARC.

The ministry in its response said that BARC data for news was not suspended and the agency continues to report viewership data for news on a weekly basis.

Commenting on it, a top government official said that post the TRP scam of 2020 BARC has done a good job in restoring the credibility of TV news genre and the efforts will continue to strengthen in the coming months. “With more digital initiatives being included in methodology to make the data foolproof, BARC is also looking at increasing the number of boxes. Collection Return Path Data (RPD) will also be one such step. The current leadership of BARC has done exceedingly well in securing the trust of all stakeholders including advertisers who depend on this data for planning,” the official added.