BARC issues policy for genre and language classification of TV channels

BARC India has come up with its revised policy on the genre and language of all TV channels monitored by BARC India. The document outlines the policy and the complete process of the classification exercise performed at BARC India.
a) Genre and language classification of all TV channels will be reviewed every quarter based on the past 13 weeks of data.
b) (i) Genre-Language of a new channel (i.e., a channel that joins in the middle of a quarter) would be calculated basis 4-weeks of playout data during the channel’s onboarding process.
(ii) Onboarding new channels and data release in YUMI: To facilitate this process, the policy for onboarding new channels will be changed to a period of minimum four to eight weeks for the entire ecosystem.
(Onboarding is defined as the period from a channel’s WM goes “live” to its data being released in YUMI).)

3. Genre classification policy:
Genre classification of TV channels will be done basis the MIB license category and the programming genre aired during the entire day (0600-2600 hours considered) in the past 13 weeks.

Steps
1. Programme report from YUMI is run for all the channels to get the total duration of programme genres for the content aired in the given time band.
2. Based on the duration, the contribution of each programme genre of the total airtime is calculated.
3. Separately, the total duration of GEC content in the GEC prime-time (1800-2300 hours) and feature film and short film/telefilms/documentaries aired during the entire day, is computed.
4. Thereafter, the programme genres are categorised into various broad genres to compute the total contribution of the broad genres to the channel’s airtime.
a. Film-based magazines and events/concerts/awards will be first excluded.
Channels categorised as news as per MIB and aired 50% or more news content of the entire programming time in a quarter would get classified as a news channel and rest will be tagged as non-news.
a) News channels with a minimum of 25% of business content will be classified as business news.
2. Non-news channels are further classified into respective genres as per the below criteria:
a) If a channel has aired any specific content for 50% or more (>=50%) of its airtime, it will be classified as that genre (for example GEC, music, etc).
i. Additional condition for movies: channels that air more than 50% of the movies (all movie-related content) need to also air at least 273 hours* of feature films/short films/telefilms/documentaries. If not, then the channel will be classified as “Others”.
b) Channels that have not aired any specific genre for at least 50% of their airtime but have aired at least 45.5 hours of GEC content in the quarter (drama, reality show, etc.) during GEC prime-time (1800 hrs -2300 hrs), will be classified as “GEC”.
c) Rest of the channels will be classified as Others.

Language classification policy
Language classification will be done basis the aired programme’s language content and viewership data in the past 13 weeks.