TRAI issues recommendations to review TV audience measurement & rating system in India

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has said in its recommendation that stakeholders are not satisfied with BARC’s rating service, owing to its lack of transparency in sharing the methodology and the representation of the panel home amongst the various platform types. TRAI also mentioned that the objectivity and neutrality are compromised with IBF holding a majority in BARC. 

Also, there is no transparency over the original collected data, and the difference between the original and the final data released to the market. The low sample to universe ratio in many markets has led to erratic viewership behaviour, resulting in misinterpretation of viewing behaviour. And even after investing heavily on technology, BARC data is still delayed by a week and is not presented daily.

In the light of these issues, TRAI has released its recommendation on ‘Review of Television Audience Measurement and Rating System in India’.

As per the TRAI official press note, MIB notified policy guidelines for Television Rating Agencies in India on 10 January 2014. Under these guidelines, the industry-led body BARC was accredited by MIB on 28 July 2015, to carry out the television ratings in India. BARC commenced its operations in 2015 and since then it is the sole provider of TV rating services on a commercial basis. 

TRAI said that several concerns relating to neutrality and reliability of the existing rating system have been raised by stakeholders, which necessitated a need to review the existing TV audience measurement and rating system in India. 

Accordingly, TRAI suo-moto issued a consultation paper on ‘ Review of TV audience measurement and ratings in India on 3 December 2018 for seeking comments of stakeholders on the issues related to review of the existing system. The last date for submission of the comments was 15 February  2019, and that of the counter-comments was 28 February 2019. TRAI received 23 comments and 3 counter comments. 

After considering all comments received from stakeholders during the consultation process and further analysis of the issues, the authority has finalised its recommendation. Some of the salient features of the recommendation are: 

1. Structural reforms are required in the Governance structure of BARC to mitigate the potential risk of conflict of interest, improve credibility and bring transparency and instil confidence of all the stakeholders in the TRP measurement system. 

2. Composition of the Board of BARC India should be changed as part of the proposed structural reforms. 

3. The Board should have at least fifty percent independent members, which should include one member as a measurement technology expert, one statistician of national repute from among the top institution(s) of the country and two representatives from the Government/Regulator. 

4. Restructured Board of BARC India should provide for equal representation of the three constituent Industry Associations, namely; AAAI, ISA and IBF and with equal voting rights irrespective of their proportion of equity holding. 

5. Tenure of the members of the Board shall be for two years.

6. Active participation of representatives of the Advertisers and the advertising agency will bring more accuracy, transparency, credibility, and neutrality in the system, due to their inherent need of advertisers to reach viewers accurately

7. Tenure of the Chairman of the Board should not be more than two years. Chairmanship of the Board shall be rotated among the constituent industry associations in every two years.

8. BARC should also separate its functions in two units (a) one unit should be responsible for prescribing methodology of ratings/validation of data, publishing the data and audit mechanism and (b) the other unit for processing the data, watermarking or any other such technical work including management of data collection agencies.

9. Once multiple agencies come forward for rating, BARC should limit its role to publishing the ratings, and framing methodology and audit mechanism for the rating agencies, so that the number of agencies can develop multiple rating system leveraging new technologies

10. The rating agency should be mandated to increase the sample size from the existing 44,000 to 60,000 by the end of 2020, and 1,00,000 by the end of 2022 using the existing technology