NBF writes to Nakul Chopra, chalks out 4-point charter of demands

It’s 11 months now since BARC India suspended publishing ratings for news channels following the TRP manipulation scam. The News Broadcasters Federation (NBF), comprising over 70 national and regional news channels, has written to recently-elected BARC CEO, Nakul Chopra, seeking resumption of release of Audience Measurement Data for the news genre.

In its letter, NBF has raised four issues and sought immediate action. First of the issues raised was the lack of a legitimate reason or rationale for BARC to single out the news genre to pause release of audience measurement ratings from October 15, 2020 till date. The Federation pointed out that two of the three channels mentioned in Mumbai Police’s FIR, which had resulted in the suspension of the ratings, were non-news channels. NBF also refuted BARC’s argument that that margin of error was higher for the news genre because of lower sample size compared to that of GECs, and counter-argued that the sample size for niche genres is far lesser compared to the news category, but BARC has not suspended the ratings for those niche English channels.

Secondly, NBF alleged that some vested national channels want the news channel ratings to be blocked to protect their own revenue potential vis-a-vis the channels that have seen a rise in their viewership in recent times. The Federation urged BARC to steer away from such vested entities and release the ratings data for the news genre who want the publishing of data to resume, and exclude the ratings of those channels who want the ratings suspension to continue.

NBF also highlighted the severe economic loss to the news genre due to lack of availability of news channel ratings and added that there has also been a considerable loss of credibility of the news genre. The news broadcasters’ body maintained that BARC’s silences in this regard is threatening the survival of over 400 news channels and livelihoods of the people involved in this industry.

While pointing out that NBF is the first and only officially recognised industry body by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, the Federation urged BARC to include it as the key stakeholder in all discussions, deliberations and decision-making process.