BARC to pause ratings of news channels

Amid the ongoing TRP (Television Rating Point) scandal, Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) board is all set to review its current standards of measuring, and pause the rating of news channels with immediate effect.

The exercise would cover all Hindi, Regional, English news and business news channels.

Starting with the 'News Genre', BARC will not publish the weekly individual ratings for all news channels during the exercise. The exercise is expected to take around eight to 12 weeks including validation and testing under the supervision of BARC Tech Comm.

"Given the most recent developments, the BARC Board was of the opinion that a pause was necessitated to enable the industry and BARC to work closely to review its already stringent protocols and further augment them to enable the industry to focus on collaborating for growth and well-natured competitiveness," said Punit Goenka, Chairman of BARC India Board.

Sunil Lulla, CEO, BARC India, added: "We at BARC take our role in truthfully and faithfully reporting What India Watches' with the greatest sense of responsibility and work with integrity to ensure that our audience estimates (ratings) remain true to their purpose".

He shared that besides "augmenting current protocols and benchmarking them with global standards, BARC is actively exploring several options to discourage unlawful inducement of its panel home viewers and further strengthening its Code of Conduct to Address Viewership Malpractice".

The development comes after the Mumbai Police busted a major fraud of manipulating TRP (Television Rating Point) data by at least three TV channels and nabbed two persons with regard to it, earlier this month.