Doordarshan gets its channels watermarked

The pubcaster has finally got itself inked for ratings. Doordarshan’s 20 channels have got watermarked as per the Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) India’s standards for viewership ratings.

Doordarshan, which has been a founding member of the measurement council, took a while to get the channels watermarked. As per sources, the cost of watermarking a channel costs around Rs 20 lakh and the pubcaster has spent close to Rs 4.5 crore to get the technology on board.

Unlike TAM ratings, the BARC ratings has announced that it will be allocating 30% of its overall samples for Rural audience which is expected to benefit the Public broadcaster Doordarshan as they hope that the increase of sample in rural market will help DD to improve their ratings.

The watermarking technology has been taken from Netherlands based Civolution and field testing of the meters is underway for homologating them to Indian conditions. As BARC India has consistently maintained, the meters have been assembled in India at a fraction of the cost of global suppliers.