PMAR 2021: Data blackout shifted focus from shouting to serious journalism: Avinash Pandey

The entire rating system in the country is designed to measure drama and not news, said Avinash Pandey, CEO, ABP Network, and according to him, only a serious corporate governance reform within BARC can put things back in order.

At the unveiling of the Pitch Madison Advertising Report 2021, Pandey pointed out how the absence of rating points has shifted the focus of news channels from sheer shouting to serious journalism.

“There are no fictions being written around deaths of the celebrities or common man. Created content has almost disappeared from news and channels are covering relevant issues like farmers’ rallies, PM speeches and discussing policy issues,” he said.

Bringing up a recent example of how channels covered the murder of an Indigo manager in Patna who was killed right outside his home, Pandey said ratings would have only convoluted the primary story bringing in various unnecessary angles of women, politics, and drama because that would bring in the much sought after ratings for the channels.

“The entire rating system is designed to measure drama and not news,” he said.

Questioning the practicality of the NCCS system, Pandey pointed out the futility of marketing a product to people living in Adarsh Nagar and also to those living in Greater Kailash. “This is a very outdated universe estimate."

Pandey says the changing government policies have not been considered while measuring BARC data. Both users and service providers have weathered policies like NTO and changes in billings and subsequent changes in viewership patterns have not been reflected in the data provided by BARC.

Pointing out flaws in the existing system, Pandey suggested that the industry must have strong RPD data. “We have 44,000 meter homes right now, but if you look at the existing currency of NCCS, which is so discriminatory; on top of that you have 1.5% boxes only measuring BARC data as per the forensic report of BARC itself for the news channels. So, how do you expect the diversity which is there in India watching different kinds of news channels from Tamil, Telugu to Kashmiri to Hindi to be represented in this system? Therefore, my recommendation is that we must move to the RPD data, the sample homes of the news shall not be less than five lakhs at least and we should actively use technology to reduce dependency on the manual selection of homes, which will solve a lot of problems that we are facing today,” he said.

Data should not be reported like the stock market, he suggested.

“When an anchor breaks the table, the ratings go up and all other channels imitate the pattern because all of us are under pressure to perform. So, this kind of algorithm that is used to measure news is actually designed to report television serials where a particular actor dies and the rating goes up. Excessive emotions boost ratings. But people watch news for intellectual satisfaction and for information and if that is not happening, then BARC is not serving the right purpose. Therefore, my suggestion is that we should move away from these kinds of algorithms of reporting,” Pandey said.

Pandey suggested the industry move to once-in-a-month reporting and move to the total reach and eyeballs in a month rather than minute by minute, segment by segment, and anchor by anchor reporting.

Pandey also points out the problems with the structure of BARC. According to him, BARC investors do not have an arm’s length distance from the functioning of the body.

“BARC’s functioning should be left to the professional marketers and data scientists and for that, we need a serious corporate governance reform within BARC. BARC is in no way responsible for serving its consumer, which are people like us because they know that whatever revenue that particular network does, a certain percentage of that would come to them. If BARC has to sell the same data, are they confident enough to sell the data at that price? That’s the question we need to ask and as founders of the body, we have a responsibility to make it happen. It will not happen unless we give Sunil have a freeway for some time. The BARC board and the IBF board stay out and support him in bringing forth the reforms that are needed.

According to Pandey, the reforms will help TV news’ transition into a platform where a news module can clock the same viewership as that of entertainment channels without becoming entertainment providers themselves. This way according to him, TV news owners will slowly be able to move towards a pay model rather than working solely on an advertising support model.