BARC shocker: Even India-Pakistan war fails to deliver ratings for TV news

New Delhi: During the India-Pakistan war week, the news genre grew by only 24% in Week 18 over the previous week, revealed BARC India data on Thursday. While the Hindi news genre grew 29%, English news witnessed a spike of 26%.

A four-week rolling average data for the three days of war takes this gain to a mere 48% for the Hindi news genre, with Wednesday and Thursday recording a 47% growth, followed by 51% growth on Friday.

It was Thursday, May 8, when the IPL match in Dharamshala was abandoned midway due to Pakistan’s airstrikes across North Indian cities.

BARC data suggests that the country continued to be hooked to the IPL amidst the unprecedented airstrikes following Operation Sindoor on Wednesday and Thursday.

However, the unfortunate suspension of the IPL could only deliver 4% incremental viewers to the Hindi news genre.

On May 8, the last IPL match before suspension delivered 9,345 AMA (000s) for Star Sports 1 Hindi between 8:30 and 9:30 PM. However, the entire Hindi news genre put together fetched only 4,834 AMA (000s). The data used here for comparison is for Pay TV because Star Sports 1 Hindi is a Pay channel.

A day before, i.e., May 7, Star Sports 1 Hindi garnered 9,144 AMA (000s), whereas the Hindi news genre recorded 3,919 AMA (000s) between 7:30 PM and 11:00 PM.

Effectively, BARC data establishes that as the war intensified, IPL viewership grew from Wednesday to Thursday.

The ironic data reporting by BARC does not stop here.

The first press conference involving Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri, Col Sofia Qureshi, and Wing Commander Vyomika Singh on Wednesday morning after Operation Sindoor could only fetch 3,527 AMA (000s) for the entire Hindi news genre. The press conference was held at 10:30 AM when no IPL match was being played.

Astonishingly, not a single channel touched 1,000 AMA (000s)—a feat achieved by several news channels in the past on random days, including during the Russia-Ukraine war. However, BARC India data establishes that the first press conference on the India-Pakistan war had fewer viewers. The highest viewership stood at 659 AMA (000s).

The situation worsened further in the second press conference on Thursday between 5:45 PM and 6:25 PM, when the Hindi news genre recorded a mere 2,148 AMA (000s). The highest viewership recorded by individual channels stood at 341 AMA (000s).

The story was no different for the third press conference, as the news genre cornered only 2,256 AMA (000s) between 5:35 PM and 5:55 PM on Friday, with top viewership at 347 AMA (000s).

BestMediaInfo lists below a few inferences drawn from the shocking data:

1. According to BARC data, the country was hardly watching news on television. Instead, they were entertaining themselves with everything else.
2. The country was not bothered even about the highly anticipated official press conferences, despite the fact that they did not coincide with the IPL.
3. BARC and apologists may argue that news viewers have shifted to digital, which is hard to believe in a war-like situation when people tend to watch coverage non-stop. This is a little impractical on mobile devices.
4. But isn’t the digital phenomenon true for every other genre, including sports? Does BARC data imply that only the sports genre is keeping TV alive?
5. BARC is expected to hide behind the four-week rolling average reporting, which continues to kill the news genre with each passing day.
6. Why would an advertiser invest in the news genre when it cannot deliver even half the TRPs of a single sports channel?
7. If the viewers have shifted to digital, according to BARC, why are news broadcasters even running TV channels? They cannot exit BARC because the nexus would ensure they are boycotted by advertisers.
8. Should the BARC management, led by Nakul Chopra, who was made CEO after his retirement from a creative agency, continue to report such data at the cost of the entire news genre?
9. Is the BARC management working at the behest of certain stakeholders, including advertisers and agencies, to justify their ROIs?
10. Isn’t BARC inviting a surgical strike by the Modi government in the form of a sudden audit of its processes?