News genre's 17-month wait for TRPs to end on March 17

Following the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting’s order last week, the ratings for the News genre will resume on March 17, 2022. Multiple sources have confirmed the development to BestMediaInfo.com.

On January 12, the Ministry had asked BARC India to release the ratings for the news genre with immediate effect and also to release the “last three months data”. As per the revised system, the reporting of News and Niche Genres will be on the basis of a “four-week rolling average”.

BARC India is in the process of reaching out to all stakeholders in the ecosystem to explain the revamped and tightened access protocols for data. It includes building a consensus among stakeholders on issues like zeroing-in on 15 special events and more importantly how the data coming from landing pages should be treated.

All the news channels who had stopped paying fees to BARC India in the absence of ratings will have to pay the full amount for the data dark period also before the release of data.

The ratings for the news genre have been in abeyance since October 15, 2020, over alleged manipulation of ratings by Republic TV owner Arnab Goswami in connivance with Former CEO of BARC India, Partho Dasgupta.

It is finally after a 17-month-long wait that the subscribers of BARC data will receive the ratings for the news genre.

Info@BestMediaInfo.com