BARC under scanner again as PM’s Operation Sindoor eve speech underdelivers

New Delhi: Amidst the build-up after the Pahalgam terror attack, Prime Minister Narendra Modi delivered a powerful speech at an event organised by ABP News, just a few hours before Operation Sindoor. But, if BARC ratings are to be believed, the channel gained only a handful of incremental viewership.

According to the BARC data released on Thursday, PM Modi’s exclusive speech between 8:22 pm to 9:00 pm on May 6 delivered a relative share of 6.4% for ABP News, a mere 0.7% increase over the channel’s share in the previous week for the same time band.

This essentially means that only 6.4% of the Hindi news viewers watched ABP News when PM was delivering the highly anticipated speech, and the channel was ranked at No. 8 during that time band.

BestMediaInfo.com had, in 2023, also highlighted similar anomalies when PM Modi's address on Aaj Tak was beaten by TV9 Bharatvarsh’s Russia-Ukraine war coverage.

Then, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting had summoned BARC officials and sought an explanation. The BARC team attributed this to the four-week rolling average applied for the dissemination of viewership data for the news genre.

In the same year, BestMediaInfo.com wrote that the government had approved the unrolling of viewership data for the news genre.

However, under pressure from a few broadcasters allegedly benefiting from the existing rating system, the government made a U-turn and allowed the data reporting to continue under the four-week rolling average.

Besides unrolling, the government had directed BARC to stop reporting viewership data coming from landing pages, but that directive too met the same fate.

While the reason remains under wraps, industry sources tell BestMediaInfo.com that the BARC management always finds some logic to avoid any change in the status quo.

Industry sources were of the view that BARC officials see any change as “biting the bullet” — finding it easier to placate bureaucrats with misplaced logic than to confront a few influential broadcasters.

At the recently concluded WAVES 2025, TRAI Chairman Anil Kumar Lahoti stressed upon the need for multiple rating agencies. However, this recommendation from TRAI has been in the public domain for 6–7 years, and nothing has moved in that direction.

The government did attempt to engage a few measurement companies, but none were ready to take the plunge due to the massive investment required to run an audience measurement set-up that meets regulatory standards.

When asked if the government would continue to allow such anomalies due to pressures from certain corners and the inaction of BARC officials, a senior I&B official told BestMediaInfo.com that the ministry will take up this matter seriously.

When the ministry took a U-turn on the unrolling of data in 2023, it was helmed by I&B Minister Anurag Thakur and Secretary Apurva Chandra.

Today, the ministry has a new leadership team — Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw and I&B Secretary Sanjay Jaju — who recently organised WAVES 2025 on a global scale. The summit, endorsed by PM Modi, aims to promote the Orange Economy, with content creation positioned as a key sunrise sector.

However, the new team is yet to act on the reforms needed to realise that ambition.