BARC decides against releasing old data, gives opt-in choice on recent ratings
Only four-week rolling average data will be provided to channels for past 13 weeks
The Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) India has decided against releasing channel-level estimates, whether rolled or unrolled, for the news genre for the period Week 40, 2020-Week 48, 2021. News channels will also have an option to opt in or opt out of receiving the past 13 weeks' rolled data before the week of resumption of the news data.
In a letter to the subscribers dated February 7, BARC India had informed that it intends to commence the release of four-week rolling average data for individual news channels with effect from March 17.
It also said that the decision to opt for Augmented Data Reporting Standards (ADRS) for the news and special interest genres has been taken after an extensive evaluation process. The council further stated that the ADRS has been rigorously tested over several months and is now industry-ready for rollout to subscribers.
"Subscribers should also note that no channel-level estimates, rolled or unrolled, will be provided for the period, Week 40, 2020 till Week 48, 2021, for the news genre," BARC India Head – Client Partnership & Revenue Function Aaditya Pathak said in the letter to the subscribers.
On the release of the past 13 weeks' data, BARC said that the past rolled data will not be made available to channels that choose to opt out of receiving this data. It further clarified that only four-week rolling average data will be provided to channels for these past 13 weeks.
The individual channel-level data of channels that 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.
Pathak said that the channels opting in for accessing their past 13 weeks' data will have their audience estimates automatically published in YUMI and their data would be available to all the YUMI subscribers. News channels that decide to opt-out of the past 13 weeks' data option will not be able to change their status at a later stage. The deadline for news channels to opt-out is February 17.
"All news channels may kindly note that the opt-out choice for past 13 weeks data is a one-time choice that cannot be changed thereafter. Once the data is published (or not), as per the choice of the broadcaster, BARC will not be in a position to change the opt-out status at a later date," Pathak said.
Apart from the weekly currency audience estimates, BARC India will also provide unrolled audience estimates and Customised Events Report (CERs) for news and special interest genres.
The unrolled audience estimates will only be provided to broadcasters for their channel(s) in a separate YUMI database. In case a broadcaster has multiple channels, they will receive unrolled estimates for each of their channels.
According to BARC, the unrolled audience estimates will be non-transactional and only for internal analysis purposes. These estimates cannot be used by the channel in the public domain. "These unrolled audience estimates will only be released to the respective channels four weeks after the first rolled augmented data release date," Pathak said.
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.
Unlike the unrolled data which cannot be used publicly, the broadcasters can use the CERs for social/marketing communications and sharing with trade/media. The CERs will be made available to subscribers from Week 14 data release.
On October 15, 2020, BARC India had temporarily paused the reporting of individual channel audience estimates for all news channels.
