MIB fully apprised of news rating roll-out plan: BARC CEO Nakul Chopra
The CEO of the audience measurement body said the opt-in and opt-out options for availing the preceding three months' data has been taken following representations from subscribers
Chopra also said BARC India is asking subscribers to pay for data that is not being released since it is a not-for-profit organisation that is dependent on revenue from subscribers. "BARC has collected the data, and we have been reporting the data at a genre level. You are aware that we are a joint industry body which is a not-for-profit company, therefore, we require subscribers to pay for that," he noted.
In his opening remarks, Chopra said that the webinar has been held to help the stakeholders understand the Augmented Data Reporting Standards (ADRS) for the News and Special Interest genres. "It is important that the entire ecosystem is properly briefed and there is a proper understanding of what these standards are so that when these ratings are released, they can be put to use in a meaningful way," he said.
On January 12, the MIB asked BARC to release the news ratings with immediate effect besides the last three months' data for the genre in a monthly format for fair and equitable representation of true trends. As per the revised system, the reporting of news and niche genres shall be on a ‘four-week rolling average concept’.
I&B minister Anurag Singh Thakur had informed the Lok Sabha that "BARC is reaching out to all the constituents to sufficiently inform and educate them about the details of the revised and augmented Data Reporting Standards of BARC and thus would need eight weeks (from the date of Ministry’s permission) to resume the reporting of individual news channel ratings".
BARC India has decided against releasing channel level estimates whether rolled or unrolled data for the news genre for the period, Week 40, 2020 to Week 48, 2021.
On the release of the past 13 weeks' data, BARC has said that the past rolled data will not be made available for those channels that choose to opt out of receiving this data. It also clarified that only four-week rolling average data will be provided to channels for these past 13 weeks.
The individual data of channels who request BARC not to publish their past 13-weeks data will not be available in YUMI software. Rather, the data for these channels would be clubbed under the ‘Other Channels’ category, to ensure that estimates for Total TV or Total News remain unchanged from previously released data.
Apart from the weekly currency audience estimates, BARC India will also provide unrolled audience estimates and Customised Events Report (CER) for News and Special Interest genre. BARC has defined CERs as reporting of an event in a single day in a financial year. It will issue three non-transferable CERs per quarter to each channel based on their specific request. The council noted that these reports would be based on unrolled data for “events” such as special news events, premiere shows, etc.
