BARC - An unknown territory

Last week’s BARC ratings have shaken the industry. I am neither carrying a brief for any network nor do I have to. But when you suddenly see that Arjun Kapoor’s ‘Kuttey’ has overtaken Shah Rukh Khan’s ‘Pathan’ in viewership terms, then there will definitely be a surprise wave and one would like to go into the logistics of such figures.

The channel which has predominantly ruled the charts for many years is suddenly replaced by an unknown player. I myself was surprised. I dialled a few friends and asked them whether they had heard the name of that particular player. Nobody had. Then to be further sure, I told my research team to make about a hundred random calls and take a straw poll if anybody had heard of this player. The result: Most did not know about it, they had not even heard the name, and the few who had heard the name had never watched that channel.

This has become a continuous phenomenon in the BARC ratings. If you judge the top 10 rated entertainment channels, the two prominent players who really invest a lot in content (fiction and reality) are replaced by some unknown players who run lousy syndicated content on their channel.

That raises an important question. In a country where people are becoming so progressive, how come their viewing habits and content choices are becoming so regressive? What are the criteria? Which are the houses being monitored? Yes, it is understandable that not all households will agree to this ‘intrusion’ of weekly monitoring, but is it the case that we are monitoring only those houses that are accommodative? I am not hinting at any monetary rewards, but if only cooperative households are available, then that surely affects the sample. So, how genuine and authentic are the samples?

I do not doubt the credibility of BARC management. They claim 30% of the sample houses are free-to-air homes. This might be because India is a very diverse country, in socio-economic terms. But do these 30% homes make so much difference that their choices overpower the rest 70%?

This imbalance in the rating outcome gives agencies and planners a bigger hand in negotiations, even with the real top players. Ultimately, this will not help any of the channels and the overall industry. As it is, the Indian media, particularly the TV channels, get one of the lowest advertising rates in the world.

As far as the news channels are concerned, two networks have already withdrawn from BARC and two other major networks are on the verge of quitting. In the news category, being among the Top 10 matters in more ways than one. For the news channels, ratings are important not only for selling inventories but also for flaunting their influence in the area they operate in – that is, in getting access to the newsmakers for news reporting and showing their impact. If top news networks start withdrawing from the BARC system, ultimately only Top 3 will remain in it – that too, only if the second and the third player are ready to accept that their position is not Numero Uno.

As per BARC, it can’t satisfy each and every player. It monitors 170 news channels, and even if it satisfies 15% of them, the rest 85% will never be satisfied. We can easily understand the position of BARC. But one thing has to be accepted that its numbers are like exit poll numbers and we never come to know the real counting numbers because only miniscule homes (less than 0.1%) out of 21 crores TV houses are measured.

One more point worth mentioning here is that, YouTube numbers cannot decide the supremacy because BARC is not into digital viewership measurement. But the reality is that, for news, people are day by day switching more to the digital mode rather than the linear TV set.

BARC replaced a private measurement company a few years back. BARC is an industry body and its stakeholders include all three pillars of the industry – broadcasters (linear & digital), agencies and advertisers. Thus, it is the industry that runs the BARC ultimately. If majority stakeholders are not satisfied by its working, it’s high time they asked the management for a diligence report.

Ultimately transparency matters. As I noted earlier, the main question remains about the homes where meters are installed. Of course, BARC cannot disclose the details of such homes and they don’t have to. But more transparency in its replies will help dispel the prevailing confusion.

(The views expressed here are solely those of the authors and do not in any way represent the views of exchange4media.com)