NBDA asks BARC to withdraw the 4 week rolling data reporting methodology

The News Broadcasters & Digital Association (NBDA) has written to BARC India, asking the TV audience ratings body to withdraw the 4-week rolling data reporting methodology. The NBDA said that this methodology was not working for the news genre and had led to severe confusion among the subscribers.

BARC India had temporarily suspended the reporting of individual channel ratings for all news channels on October 15, 2020, following reports of manipulation of TRPs. The BARC Board had earlier decided that its Technical Committee (Tech Comm) would review the existing standards of measuring and reporting the data of News and Special Interest genres, to address their statistical variability and thereby improve their robustness.

BARC also observed that it was after an extensive consultation with stakeholder representatives that the ratings body had arrived at a statistically sound and effective solution – the Augmented Data Reporting Standards for the News and Special Interest genres.

Since the resumption of the BARC Ratings earlier in 2022, NBDA had in its various discussions brought to the notice of BARC that the 4-week rolling data reporting methodology was not working for the news genre. In its letter to BARC, NBDA said, “One of the biggest shortfalls of the 4-week rolling data reporting methodology is its inherent inability to measure and evaluate content at a daily level. As a result, the news channels are unable and incapacitated to decide on the right stories which work or which are working and as a counterblast the same is resulting in high supply of war mongering stories and promotion of frivolous and toxic content.”

The news broadcasters body further stated that no genre level information was being reported in unrolled data, making the data unusable and meaningless for broadcasters. Which is why in all it discussions and representations, the NBDA had repeatedly suggested to BARC to get back to the old unrolled reporting regime.

At its meeting held on November 17, 2022, the NBDA Board discussed this matter and decided to once again convey to BARC to get back to the old unrolled reporting regime as soon as possible.