I&B ministry approves unrolling of viewership data for the news genre

The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting last week approved the unrolling of the viewership data for the news and niche genres.

A senior I&B official confirmed the development with BestMediaInfo.com.

With this, BARC India will soon do away with the four-week rolling average introduced with the return of ratings for the news genre after a 17-month pause due to the alleged TRP scam.

The ratings for the news genre were resumed last year on March 17 following an order by I&B secretary Apurva Chandra.

The decision to allow the unrolling of data follows the recent approval by the ministry to share the raw-level/respondent-level data with the broadcasters.

However, BestMediaInfo.com reported that the roll-out of RLD apparently turned out to be a futile exercise on the part of the I&B ministry aiming to address the grievances from broadcasters regarding manipulations of television ratings using external interventions.

The decision to unroll the data will also impact the RLD as the news broadcasters will get the unrolled RLD.

Earlier this year, BestMediaInfo.com reported that a majority of BARC Board members had approved the unrolling of data in January but it could not get a go-ahead from the government.

The idea of a four-week rolling average, which was intended to reduce the noise level on a weekly basis by the news channels and on the news channels, was alleged to be distorting the viewership data due to faulty algorithms.

Several representations were made by news broadcasters with BARC questioning the algorithm pertaining to the reach numbers, which exceeded that of general entertainment channels.

Info@BestMediaInfo.com