BARC protecting the interest of select legacy brands: NBF

News Broadcasters Federation (NBF) has expressed it deep concern ad apprehension of BARC’s announcement on the resumption of ratings for the news genre, which possibly indicates “continued favouritism to select few channels that would reflect in skewed audience measurement numbers and fabricated industry representation when the data is planned to be released on March 17, 2022. BARC’s move is in complete defiance and in violation of MIB’s direction dated- 12 January 2022,” said R Jai Krishna, Secretary-General, NBF.

NBF, in a release, said that BARC’s communication to its subscribers on 7 February 2022 (Monday) comes barely a week after detailed discussion with channels of NBDA, which are of conflict of interest on this issue. “NBF, as the largest new broadcasters industry association protecting the business interest of news channels, has not been consulted despite several requests on the same. We are also apprehensive about whether the date of resumption of ratings i.e. 17 March 2022 or the opt out methodology has an official seal of approval from the MIB,” said the NBF release.

History being wiped out

NBF said that even during the dark period - October 15 2020 until date - audience data is being collected and tabulated for all genres including those with a lesser sample size than news channels. “So, in all fairness, it should be released as they are, with immediate effect and as directed by the MIB. The graph attached points towards the possibility of vested interests being served of a select few unless the data for the entire blackout period for news Genre is released. Is it a mere coincidence that this group of select few represent the board of NBDA and some of them are on the board of IBDF is the controlling authority of

BARC,” said the NBF release.  

According to the NBF, two NBF channels, TV9 Bharatvarsh, Republic Bharat, and News Nation, and not part of NBDA - were gaining ground in the Hindi news genre and emerged as in leadership positions, as well as other NBF member channels were changing the pecking order of the news genre ratings across the country. “Very clearly, had the ratings continued with a similar trend, the NBDA channels which were losing ground in the pecking order would not have been able to protect their advertising rates vis-à-vis these emerging channels. And, now by wiping out the entire history BARC is depriving the advertisers of complete clarity on how news viewership had been during this period and barring them from doing post evaluation of their campaigns,” alleges NBF.

Opt-out options to obfuscate reality

The MIB had directed BARC to immediately release the data with ‘immediate effect’ on a four-week-rolling-over basis including the data for the preceding three months ‘for fair and equitable representation of true trends’, said the NBF release. “BARC, however, has chosen to completely undermine the government’s order and in violation is now proceeding with an opt-out option. Ratings are relative within a genre. The opt-out option is a direct contravention and renders completely redundant the MIB direction of 3-month ratings. The opt-out is a way to conceal even recent historical data. News channels generate revenue by selling air time to advertisers on the primary condition that news channel viewership is measured in market share terms. Any channel opting out disrupts the true representation of the market share. BARC by providing an opt-out option is doing an extreme disservice to the entire industry including advertisers and advertising agencies as well.”

March 17, 2022?

 The MID order came on January 12, 2022, and the ministry

specifically said ‘immediately’ but in turn BARC has chosen March 17, 2022.

“In fact, even if the audience data is released on a 4-week rolling average basis on March 17, 2022, the final TRPs will skew the average since it would only reflect a one-off major event of the Assembly elections and the ensuing counting day to five states, including Uttar Pradesh. The day chosen for the resumption of ratings will not give a fair and transparent picture of the actual viewership across the stakeholders - trusted viewers, advertisers and advertising agencies,” said the NBF.

The federation says that Aaj Tak which has been around for more than 20 years as the leader of the Hindi news genre in viewership terms has benefitted on big News days, such as elections in Hindi-speaking states and counting day news coverage. “Is it a mere coincidence that the Vice -Chairperson of Aaj Tak is on the board of BARC and the chairperson of TV Today Group is on IBDF which controls BARC as the majority shareholder?” asks NBF.

Landing Pages

NBF alleged that BARC is silent on the systems that have to be put in place to correct the impact of landing pages, a major concern for the industry. “For instance, in West Bengal, ABP Ananda, we believe, has the landing page on a distribution network that covers about 50 percent of the state. BARC needs to openly declare the outliers and the measures that are

being taken to prevent the spike in ratings due to landing pages.”

 Raw Data Preservation

Not only historical data should be released for the entire blackout period, BARC has to give assurance to preserve raw data collected in the past 16 months but released to the subscribers. BARC should ensure that the historical raw data is not tampered with.

So that in any future investigation or litigation, as and when the need arises, it is readily available for inspection. The BARC technical committee must provide assurance of this.

In view of the above-mentioned crucial concerns, NBF wants the BARC board, excluding members representing news channels with conflict of interest, to call for an open house with equal representation from both NBF and NBDA members, to discuss and resolve the following issues.

a). Why is taking BARC so long to resume ratings after the government’s order?

b) Why would BARC disregard MIB’s instructions of equal and fair representation by allowing channels to opt out?

c) Why would BARC want to wipe out History while data was collected for the universe and released for other genres?

d) Why outlier issues with regard to landing pages will not be addressed?

This Open House discussion, demands NBF, should be accessible to all stakeholders including news Channels, advertisers and advertising agencies for the sake of transparency.