The many storms that Sunil Lulla weathered

In a surprising late evening development yesterday (August 19, 2021) came the news of Sunil Lulla quitting BARC India as its CEO. Though there is no official statement yet from BARC India, several senior industry leaders have confirmed Lulla’s exit from the television ratings measurement body. While speculations are rife about Lulla’s reasons for quitting the organisation, a senior communications industry leader told Adgully that Lulla has “some better options outside BARC, which far outweigh his current prospects at BARC”.

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Taking a look back at Lulla’s almost two-year long tenure as the BARC CEO, it was a stormy one for most part ,where he had to fight fires at many fronts. Lulla had joined BARC in October 2019 after being in leadership positions in media organisations – BCCL, Times Television Network, Balaji Telefilms, Sony Entertainment Television; heading Grey Group India as its Chairman & MD, and a senior agency role at JWT; as well as in senior corporate roles in Diageo and United Distillers, among others.

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The biggest challenge that Lulla faced at BARC would most definitely be the TRP scam that exploded in October 2020 just as India was emerging out of the first wave of COVID-19 and nationwide lockdowns. Quite a few top former BARC executives were arrested following investigations by the Mumbai Police for their alleged involvement in manipulating television ratings of certain channels, including news channels. Among those arrested were Partho Dasgupta, who had been at the helm of BARC as its CEO since the ratings body’s inception and from whom Lulla had taken over the reins, and Romil Ramgarhia, the former COO of BARC India. Lulla, too, had to face Mumbai Police probe in the case.

Amid the raging controversy over TRP manipulation, Lulla wrote to BARC YUMI subscribers that its ratings continue to remain true to purpose. While stressing that as a data science driven joint industry body, BARC dealt only in facts and evidence, Lulla shared five key facts:

BARC India has authorised Meterology Data (MDL), which is a subsidiary and functions at arm’s length, to undertake panel home operations through its authorized vendors. One of such authorised vendor is Hansa Market Research (Complainant in the FIR filed at Kandivali, Mumbai), who is authorised to undertake the Panel Home installation, maintenance, and operations in Mumbai on behalf of MDL under an agreement with strict confidentiality.
The work was being carried out by the Hansa employee in the rank of Relationship Manager (RM). BARC’s Vigilance Team reported that five BARC India panel homes, serviced by Hansa, were showing some abnormality. As is the protocol, Hansa was advised to investigate further. The Hansa audit showed that the said employee was suspected to be involved in tampering and influencing the panel household members.
Basis the information provided by Hansa, Mumbai police registered a FIR dated 6.10.2020 against the said employee in the Kandivali Police Station in Mumbai Circle, Maharashtra.
The Mumbai Police are now investigating the matter and BARC India is providing the necessary information and support asked of it by the authorities. The suspected homes have been removed from reporting.
It is important to recognise that any attempt to compromise panel homes or influence viewership through unscrupulous means is unlawful, and BARC has strictly followed our established Vigilance and Disciplinary Committee guidelines to deal with such isolated attempts.

He maintained that despite what was being reported in the media, “our governance continues to be robust and all of us at BARC continue to be driven by only one goal: to generate ratings that you rely on which are deeply rooted in science, free of any bias and truly reflect ‘What India Watches’.”

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Following the TRP controversy, BARC India suspended television ratings for news channels, much to the chagrin of news broadcasters, who have been fighting for restoration of News genre ratings as they stress that it has been hurting their ad revenues and operations.

Expectations from Lulla were huge when he took charge at BARC India after Dasgupta’s sudden exit – the landing page and dual LCN issues remained without a successful solution, the broadcast industry has been trying to navigate in the post-NTO world, even as the audience measurement landscape became increasingly complicated.

As Lulla’s tenure ends, these issues continue to plague the broadcast industry in India. NTO 2.0 has become a bone of contention for the broadcasters, who are fighting the case in the Supreme Court (the next hearing is scheduled for September 7, 2021) and seeking a stay on its implementation.

Lulla’s tenure also saw the introduction of several initiatives at BARC India. As part of its Data Validation Quality Initiative, BARC introduced algorithms to fortify its data validation process. This was done to take care of landing page’s impact on viewership data across all channel genres.

During his tenure, BARC also made the transition to ‘Average Minute Audience’ for ratings data from the earlier ‘Impressions’. Another change that BARC made during this period was to stop publishing genre-wise TV viewership data since June 17, 2021 for the non-subscribers. Instead, the TV measurement body started releasing data for the Top 5 channels in different states and markets, and the Top 10 channels for All India, +2. However, BARC has continued with providing data for the Top 10 Advertisers and Top 10 Brands across genres.

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Throughout the pandemic period in 2020, Sunil Lulla along with Nielsen presented the BARC ratings data and observations on television content consumption during the lockdown via a series of virtual conferences.

All eyes are now on who will take over the mantle from Lulla as he/she has their work cut out for them. There are several issues that remain unresolved and the new BARC chief will be expected to address them on taking charge.

It’s a developing story. Watch this space for further developments.