NEW DELHI: The suspension of BARC ratings for the genre has toned down the drama on Indian news channels, ABP Network CEO Avinash Pandey opined while speaking at a public forum on Wednesday.
He said, “I have a question for the audience; don't you like the fact that there is no rating? Because now there is no shouting match happening on television channels. There are no fictions being written around deaths of the celebrities or common man and any kind of ‘created content’ has almost disappeared. People are covering the normal farmers’ rally, PM speeches, and discussing policy issues.”
He further wondered whether it’s the journalists or the news producers who are debasing the content on Indian news channels or the flawed measurement system which is created to measure entertainment and not news.
Pandey then went on to restate his long-standing points to suggest that the changes required in the BARC module of measurement, which he had earlier stated in an Indiantelevision.com virtual roundtable last August as well.
He highlighted that the NCCS system of audience segregation is very outdated and needs a complete rejig. “Who are you targeting the product at and how are you choosing the medium? That means someone in the marketing community or someone in different offices wants to control the media spend going by his own assumptions and his own research. So what are we paying BARC for?”
Universal estimates are also outdated, Pandey added, with the last establishment survey happening in July 2018. “BARC reports a universe of 197 million households. However, according to a Chrome study, the actual households have considerably increased to 207 million.”
“There is no consideration for the impact of NTO on channel subscriptions and the resulting changing viewership behaviours,” he pointed out.
Pandey continued that only 1.5 per cent of boxes are used to collect data for all news, as revealed by a BARC forensic report, which is very less for a diverse country like India. As a solution, he suggested that the measurements should, therefore, be based on strong RPD data.
“The sample homes for news shall not be less than five lakhs, and we shall use tech to continuously move panels to reduce dependency on manual selection of homes,” he highlighted.
Pandey also emphasised that great structural corporate governance reforms are required in BARC for a better measurement system. “We need to do away with the levy system and put a price per use model. Also, more representation of regional and smaller channels and agencies is required on the board. It shall be run by professionals and shall go through forensic scrutiny every year.”
He further added that till the time required changes are not put in place, BARC should limit itself to once-a-month reporting of data instead of a minute-by-minute stock-market like analysis. He wrapped up by saying that the industry needs to leave BARC CEO Sunil Lulla alone so he can manage the crisis on his own.
