News broadcasters not happy with BARC cap on Customised Events Report
A few channels already have and some more are planning to petition BARC
Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) India's decision to put a cap on the number of Customised Events Report (CER) that news channels can avail in a year has raised concerns among broadcasters. According to sources in the industry, individual news broadcasters already have or are planning to petition BARC to look into the issue.
The news broadcasters feel that the capping of the non-transferable CER to be issued to each channel is uncalled for. BARC will be issuing up to three CERs per quarter or 12 in a year. It has defined CER as reporting of an event in a single day in a financial year. These reports would be based on unrolled data for “events” such as special news events, premiere shows, etc.
"BARC has decided that we can choose only 12 qualifiers as a broadcaster. Most of the channels don't agree with this viewpoint. We are paying BARC for the viewership data then what is the point of putting a limit on the number CER? This is a big worry for us as broadcasters," said a top official with a leading news network.
The official also stated that the BARC has put a limit on CER since it doesn't want any further confrontation among news broadcasters. He further said that the maximum limit on the number of CER will make it difficult for news channels to plan content or maximise their ad revenue.
"Individual broadcasters have already raised with BARC the issue of CER being capped at 12. The council has promised to look into the issue. We had some questions from a revenue point of view which has been communicated to BARC," the official said adding, "How will I plan my content if I don't know the FPC (broadcast schedule) of my competition, because at the end of the day we are competing with each other. If I don't have access to the FPC of my competition then how can I plan my content? Having just 12 CERs in a year will prevent us from maximising our revenue also."
The CEO of a leading news network said that the news genre is event-led and the entire category sees an upsurge on important news days like Republic/Independence Day, Budget or election counting day. He also pointed out that the popular channels will seek CERs, although 12 reports in a year are insufficient. Smaller channels, he noted, do not see much advantage in these reports since for then, the overall jump in viewership on news-heavy days is marginal.
"Top channels will subscribe to CER since they are the ones at an advantage on important news days like election counting days. The viewership share of top channels sees a huge increase because people tend to flip between the top five channels on the EPG. Weaker channels might not take CERs since the upside for them is not that big. The CERs will help channels to build a strong perception among the advertisers that the rate hike they got on a particular day is justified. Twelve CERs per year is insufficient since the number of key events for news channels is more than that," the CEO said.
A senior executive with a TV news broadcast company contended that the BARC should not be attaching conditions like 12 CERs in a year. "I don't understand why BARC India is making it conditional to get data for events. Why can't they share data for big events as usual as it used to happen in the past?" the executive said.
The CFO of a news broadcasting company said that the data for the news genre will come once in four weeks. This means that the news channels will not have any visibility on the performance of their content on specific days. "When you have four weeks data you do not know what happened on a particular day. Big events vary from language to language. There is no need to have a cap on the number of events for which ratings are provided," the CFO said.
As reported earlier, BARC India CEO Nakul Chopra has said that the CERs for News and Special Interest genres will only be shared with the concerned channel and will not be visible in the YUMI analytics software.
"It will not be shared. It will only be shared with the channel whose report it is. It's up to them who they want to share it with. The report will not be visible in the YUMI database," Chopra said while addressing a Q&A session during the webinar on 17th February.
BARC India Head – Client Partnership & Revenue Function Aaditya Pathak has said that the need to seek CER will only arise if a channel wants to socialise/promote or go public with the data for a particular day or part of programme. "Any which ways, the broadcasters would have the unrolled database, and they can look at their own estimates. Therefore, the reason to ask a CER would only arise if they would go out the whole hog," he added.
Shekhar Banerjee, Chief Client Officer & Head - West, Wavemaker India, says the announcement of news channel rating has left him disappointed. “It is definitely better than no rating but suppression of special occasions and events by rolling the data is not good news for the genre. News is real time and ratings have to be dynamic, if there are concerns about stability of the data then the focus should be towards educating and fixing those anomalies, not reducing the sensitivity of actual consumer behaviour. This decision is likely to impact how advertisers plan and buy special events,” Banerjee said.
