Here’s why BARC India may never do RPD

New Delhi: Seven months after the government flagged lower sample size, among other issues, in its consultation paper to overhaul TRP ratings guidelines, BARC India refused to comment on whether the ratings agency has any plan to integrate Return Path Data into final TV ratings.

Even as BARC India chose not to respond to queries regarding its action plan on RPD, BestMediaInfo accessed a rare dataset that suggests the ratings agency may have been working to delay this mechanism over the past several years, and may continue to do so.

The answer lies in the huge difference between TRP ratings measured via peoplemeters and those reflected through RPD.

According to the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, BARC is delivering TRPs with data collected through 58,000 peoplemeters for a massive 230 million television households. This represents merely 0.025 per cent of Indian TV homes.

In contrast, Return Path Data is collected directly from set-top boxes (STBs) or internet-connected smart TVs.

While data collected through peoplemeters is highly controlled, leaving significant scope for manipulation, RPD is relatively tamper-proof because of its sample size, running into millions of set-top boxes.

The media and entertainment industry has long been sold a familiar narrative that the share of the news genre is minuscule, often cited in the range of 3.5-10 per cent.

Advertisers, for decades, have maintained that news is too small a genre to focus on. The standard line has been that they buy news only for reach and frequency, and only at a cheaper cost.

To set the context, the average rate for a top GEC is typically around Rs 50,000, whereas a top news channel manages around Rs 5,000. This pricing gap has been defended for years on the back of the “small genre” narrative.

The rare dataset

Between weeks 32 and 44 of 2025, the news genre had a 3.76 per cent share, according to BARC data for the Pay TV segment.

In comparison, the share of the Hindi general entertainment genre was approximately seven times higher than that of news. For the 13-week period, Hindi GECs had an average genre share of 25.87 per cent.

Now look at an RPD dataset for the same period, coming from millions of set-top boxes, exclusively accessed by BestMediaInfo.

Across those 13 weeks, the RPD data for a DTH platform showed a clearly opposite picture.

Hindi News average reach stood at around 52.2 per cent, while Hindi GEC recorded an average reach of around 43.6 per cent.

That is a gap of around 8.5 percentage points. Hindi News was ahead on reach in every single week of this 13-week window.

The AMA’000 for Hindi News was marginally higher (around 2.6 per cent) than Hindi GECs.

That is the core reason RPD will always remain an inconvenient conversation for BARC.

If RPD starts getting integrated into final TV ratings, the market will be forced to confront the possibility that the “small news genre” story is not a neutral market truth, but a measurement-dependent truth.

It is about whether the entire genre hierarchy that the ad market has priced for years stands on shaky ground.

Several industry leaders BestMediaInfo.com spoke to raised questions on the integrity of BARC data and demanded that the government take action.

“The real collusion appears to be somewhere else, but the CCI was busy hunting agencies. That’s a diversionary tactic,” said an advertising agency head whose agency was raided by the competition watchdog in March 2025.