BMI Impact: I&B ministry approves BARC's offer to share rolled RLD for news channels

The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting on Thursday approved BARC India’s offer to share respondent-level data which will be a rolled data for the news genre.

The approval from the ministry was communicated to BARC India officials in a meeting called by the I&B Secretary Apurva Chandra.

In an exclusive conversation with BestMediaInfo.com after meeting BARC officials, Chandra said that the MIB is taking steps to bring more transparency.

"This is the first step in this direction and we will monitor how it works. We will take further steps if required," Chandra said.

BestMediaInfo.com has been consistently writing about the need to bring transparency to the ratings system whose credibility was significantly impacted following the alleged TRP scam.

The infamous TRP scam in 2020 revealed the manipulations at the internal level involving senior BARC officials including former CEO Partho Dasgupta.

After the August 10 order to BARC India to share raw-level data with broadcasters, I&B Secretary Apurva Chandra told BestMediaInfo.com that “raw-level data will be very useful in checking manipulation”.

RLD will give viewership access across the 55,000-plus meters and individuals residing within.

This allows broadcasters to granularly read the data and make decisions.

For example: A broadcaster will be able to read the viewership of households that are watching the Ukraine-Russia war consistently and those who are interested in current affairs.

Also, patterns will emerge more clearly to guess the audience induced by landing and those that are natural core viewers. 

What the ministry has not taken up is the unrolling of RLD. It is expected that this step or others that are deemed fit will be taken if major distortionary outliers come to the fore.

It’s a welcome first step and will help legacy leaders and new entrants alike. It is expected that cohorts of astro etc. or yoga audiences can be studied separately and those who come on breaking news separately will allow newsrooms to focus better on their core TGs.

Info@BestMediaInfo.com