'Four-week rolling average data brings in a lot of stability in news viewership figures'

It has been a little more than a month since IPG Mediabrands India CEO Shashi Sinha took charge as the chairperson of the Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) India. Sinha had to step in at a time when the credibility of the council was under constant scrutiny, especially around the return of television rating points (TRP) for the news genre which were on hold for nearly 15 months. Sinha sat down with e4m Co-founder and Director Nawal Ahuja at the recently concluded NewsNext summit to discuss his journey thus far and the way ahead.

Edited excerpts follow:

On his first month as BARC chairperson

Sinha shared that he took the chair at BARC with two long-term plans in mind. “The first one was to increase the number of homes we cover, include more segments of the society, and get return path data from DTHs, so we can have more robust data; and the second was to get TV + digital data. I know the CPMs for the latter are very different, but how the industry has been evolving, it is very important to have this robust data. BARC is ready to take on these changes and need the industry support.”

However, he added that most of his time has been taken by the return of news TRPs and the questions raised by the industry around the new system of four-week rolling data and the immediate impact that was seen in the ratings and channel rankings.

Addressing the NBA’s concerns around the TRP data, reach and ratings, he said, “BARC is under a lot of pressure because of how things are panning out right now, but we are working around it. We have asked channels to come to us with any questions and we are answering their questions with full transparency; be it the queries around the rolling data and its competence, change in rankings, our questions around outliers. We have told them that we will support them with full transparency if they ask logical questions.”

Current media spends and future of television

Speaking about the current media spends on television, Sinha shared that the industry is currently under pressure because of the war and resultant issues in the productions & supply changes for most brands. “FMCG, which is the mainstay for us, has started pulling back spends and reducing advertising. I think the coming six months are going to be challenging.”

Addressing the TV vs digital debate, Sinha insisted that latter might not be replacing television as the top medium because Indians are still in favour of advertising-led content. “If you look at the numbers, 80% of the revenue on TV and digital comes from advertising. And advertisers will always prefer television more because it is a high-reach medium, and the CPMs are low. Its overall a credible medium for the advertising industry. Yes, digital is getting popular but it is more dependent on performance and performance doesn’t do brand building.”

On TV news ratings and four-week rolling data

“When you look at news genre, it is very different from others. First of all, news is a sensitive domain and data does pick up during key events like an election or riots, or war. BARC is not a content expert and we can’t say that someone’s TRP shot up because of a certain report or coverage but that this the trend. Secondly, there is a lot of instability in the news viewership data. The four-week average brings in a lot of stability in that regard as it compresses the data in a more comprehensive way,” Sinha quipped.

On the other hand, he agreed that from a business perspective, there could be a downside to it as there is a long gap between the data timelines. “Yes, the industry will take some time to warm up to this new course of things and strategising new content and businesses will take a little longer.” However, he remained confident that this data is going to be beneficial for the news industry in the longer run.

He added that it is a wonderful achievement on BARC’s end to bring out rolling data on a system that has been designed to calculate unrolled metrics for other genres.

On outliers and landing pages

Speaking about the outliers, Sinha said that the issue is largely at the distribution end and BARC’s systems are fully automated and process-driven to have the right analysis of the outliers. “There is no issue about ATS (average time spent) and we have finetuned the system to figure out any anomaly. The whole point is to understand that certain people might leave the TV on a particular channel running and not be in the room. And when it comes to news, it is a relatively smaller genre. The issues need to be addressed at the distribution level which is a semi-organised market right now.”

For landing pages, he said that the BARC is currently held between the Supreme Court and the channels as the matter is sub-judice right now. But he emphasised that the BARC algorithm to cull landing page data is quite robust and advanced.

“Some channels ask us why we are using this tool to measure the landing page data and all I want to tell them is that we are trying to protect the television industry as the viewership is already going down. Having the right analysis of landing page data, which is only involved when a viewer spends time watching a certain channel continually after it appears on the landing page, helps us have a broader view of television viewership. It also helps the advertisers to make right decisions about their ad spends. Many would, in fact, argue that there is no issue in being visible on landing pages much like how people put stuff in window display at retail shops. This system is working for each party’s benefit,” he elaborated.

Perception about news content

Just a few days ago, the I&B ministry issued an advisory to private news channels to refrain from making false claims and using scandalous headlines, highlighting that several satellite TV channels have carried out coverage of events and incidents in a manner which appears to be unauthentic, misleading, sensational and using socially unacceptable language and remarks. The advisory has cited the Ukraine-Russian conflict and the violence in North-West Delhi in part.

On being questioned about his stand, Sinha said, “BARC has no expertise in content and cannot really comment on what a channel wants to run or not. But personally, as an audience and a representative of the advertising industry, I would like to say that it is sad that the government had to intervene like this.”

He added that the channels fighting over TRPs and each claiming to be number one while pulling each other down has left a sour taste in the mouth of advertisers.

He quipped, “When you are pulling each other down, you are pulling the whole industry down. The advertisers today are very skeptical about where their content is going and they do ask if the content on a channel is polarising or negative or hate-inducing. The news genre is therefore losing a lot of credibility among advertisers and marketers. As I said, I am not competent enough to comment on anyone’s content, but the channels must ask themselves if this is the kind of content they want to see!”