Times Network issues legal notice to BARC

The notice has been sent for 'Illegal and fraudulent viewership data manipulation and tampering of Television Rating Points'

by exchange4media Staff
Published: Feb 14, 2021 9:47 PM | 1 min read

Times Network has issued legal notice to BARC for “Illegal and fraudulent viewership data manipulation and tampering of Television Rating Points.

“Times Now, a leading English News Genre channel ranked as the number one channel till May 2017 in its genre, had been, suspiciously, reduced to the second position in a fraudulent/illegal manner with a view to make another newly launched English News Channel as the number one channel,” stated the notice which e4m has a copy of.

As per the notice, Times Network has claimed that as per BARC’s own viewership data spanning 44 weeks (from week 24 of 2017 till week 11 of 2018) submitted to the Mumbai Police vide its letter dated 22.12.2020. It further states that “Times Now” was clearly number one and its viewership was manipulated, fudged, reduced for giving undue benefit to a newly launched undeserving competitor channel in 2017.

“The purported “Outlier Policy” has been blatantly abused by BARC to deliberately and fraudulently reduce the weekly viewership impressions of Times Now week after week with the sole intent”, mentions the notice.