Trepidation, optimism, scepticism: Mixed feelings in industry as news ratings return today

With the Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) India all set to come out with news viewership data today after a gap of 17 months, the TV news industry has mixed feelings about the resumption of ratings. Most news channels are feeling a sense of trepidation as they are unsure where they will stand on the viewership table.

The trepidation stems from the fact that most of the news channels will be negotiating their annual ad deals with clients in the next days and weeks. While news channels are anxious, media agencies and advertisers are elated about the prospect of the rating-dark period for news coming to an end.

Dabur India Senior General Manager and Head of Media Rajiv Dubey said that the availability of ratings will allow advertisers to make a more informed choice about their media spends.

"We have been waiting for the news rating to come out because there has been a rating-dark period and one doesn't know which are the new channels that one should bet on. A lot of new channels have launched, and those channels are totally in the dark. One doesn't know if one should spend or shouldn't spend behind those channels. Due to lack of ratings, we don't know the order of the top channels and how they have behaved, how the time bands have behaved, how the channels behaved during the second and third wave, and how the channels behaved during the election period," he contended.

"The news industry has suffered as a whole due to rating darkness. Once the data comes out, we will be able to put money in the genre in the right way and in the right channels. I am eagerly waiting for the data to come, and I hope that it continues," he stated.

He also cited the example of the newspaper industry which, he said, had to bear the consequences of the stalling of the Indian Readership Survey (IRS). "The same thing is going to happen to news channels as well. It will not grow if they don't allow the data to come out," Dubey noted.

Vibrant Media VP - Planning Strategy Karthik Lakshminarayan, shared, "We are excited with the return of news ratings. There have been a lot of changes in the way news has been consumed by the audience, and it will surely help understand this better. We are sure the changes made by BARC will ensure greater stability and better data for advertisers."

Speaking on condition of anonymity, a senior media planner said, "There is some trepidation, some optimism, and overall, there are a lot of mixed emotions. To begin with, as we all know, some news networks have declined to be a part of the reporting and will become a part of the other channels' classification, and then there will be some channels that will blow their trumpet as they always wanted to have ratings back. As far as agencies are concerned, all that happened in the interim was that we were extrapolating GRPs based on past ratings. Now, agencies will be concerned about how far or close they were to the projections, extrapolations that they had made. So that is the source of our concern, but I believe we will have to live with it and find a solution."

News industry sceptical about BARC data

A senior official from a leading news network said that the return of ratings will help news broadcasters to get better pricing from advertisers. "This will help us decide on the right pricing for the channels for the annual deals that we are getting into. Most of the annual deals happen in March-April. The resumption of ratings will help the entire fraternity."

However, not everyone shares this optimism. Some are still sceptical about the credibility of BARC data. The votaries of this argument say that the audience measurement body has done precious little to ensure that the past mistakes are not repeated in the future.

"There is a lot of scepticism in the industry about the BARC data roll-out for the news genre. They are publishing the data since the government has directed them to do so. BARC has not discussed the modalities of the ratings. We don't know if they have increased the sample size or not. Last time around, when the data was discontinued, there were a lot of anomalies. We don't know if those anomalies have been corrected," said a top official from a TV news broadcaster.

He further stated that the TV news industry will remain divided into two groups as the ones who do well will come out in support of the rating system while the losers will question the credibility of the data. "When the rating comes out, the channels that will come out on top will praise the rating system while the ones who don't fare well will criticise it. That criticism will stick because BARC ratings have been tampered with once and there is a question mark on the credibility of the rating system."

Another senior executive from a news channel said, "We will be getting viewership data after 15-16 months, so definitely there is excitement, but we are also worried about how the data will roll out. We all have certain questions, but I think once we get the ratings will be in a better position to talk about it."

An industry expert shared that there is scepticism about the reliability of BARC data following the TRP scam. "Whatever comes out should not be taken at face value. But the point is that the product categories and brands that have always had news as an affinity genre for their audiences will invest in the news genre like they were doing all this while even without data, based on the belief that this works for their type of audience. So that is still going to prevail."

He further stated that the advertisers will continue to invest in news, whether the data is there or not, and irrespective of whether it's trustworthy or not. "We have been telling our clients that there is a new system that has been set up, and for the first three to four months, don't take it seriously. Allow things to settle, for a pattern to emerge, and then we can go deep into assessing it and that is the suggestion we are giving to our clients."