Tag: BARC India

BARC exhorts TRAI to strengthen existing TV audience measurement system

MUMBAI: Broadcast Audience Research Council India (BARC), the country’s premier TV audience data measurer, has suggested to the Indian regulator Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) that having more multiple measurement and ratings mechanisms may not be “advisable” and could create confusion. Instead, it was better to invest further in the existing currency with the goal to make it more robust.

“Having more than one ratings service/currency would not be in the interests of industry, and, hence is not desirable. Instead of increasing number of ratings agencies, it would be advisable to invest in the existing system and make it even more robust and accurate,” BARC India has said in its submission to a consultation paper on TV audience measurement overhaul floated by the TRAI.

Making a case to further boost the functioning of BARC India, the organisation has said steps were needed to be taken to “increase the sample/panel through cost effective technologies” like sample return path data (SRPD).

“TV viewership measurement systems across most mature markets are carried out by a single agency. The existence of more than one rating agencies (and currency) will create confusion and will lead to inefficiency in the market. When there are more than one data sets for a same set of channels, it leads to ambiguity,” BARC India has argued.

TRAI had floated a consultation paper on ‘Review of Television Audience Measurement and Ratings in India’ on 3 December 2018 seeking feedback from stakeholders with a view to examine various aspects of the system, which is presently done by BARC India that is a joint venture amongst three industry organisations — the Indian Broadcasting Foundation (IBF), Advertising Agencies Association of India (AAAI) and the Indian Society of Advertisers (ISA). The original deadline for making submissions was extended on request from the stakeholders.

Arguing against promoting more competition in the audience measurement eco-system, BARC India has cited international media reports relating to this particular issue in the Philippines.
“Philippines presents a typical example of confusion and ambiguity in market due to presence of more than one measurement agency. TV measurement in the Philippines is conducted by Kantar Media Philippines and AGB Nielsen Media Research Philippines. Data produced by the two companies are often used by competing channels to claim leadership,” BARC India has argued.

Pointing out that accuracy of data can be ensured through larger panel that can, inter alia, be sustained by industry, BARC India has tried to put things in context by highlighting the US TV industry sustains a panel of 108900 individuals with a TV adex of $68 billion, while in India BARC India “runs a panel of 135,000 individuals with adex of approximately $4 billion”.

However, for a more robust system to be in place, which will also strengthen BARC India, the organisation has said “regulatory and government support” was essential and the support should involve “mandating digital platform operators (DTH and cable), as well as TV OEM manufacturers (of smart TV sets), to share return path data from samples to measurement provider”.

“To make data more accurate, there are steps required that go beyond the remit and domain of BARC. Legal and punitive framework to weed out panel tampering will go a long way in building further acceptance of our data,” BARC India has stated, reiterating its position on been backed by some legal teeth to fight attempts of data infiltrations and manipulation.

While admitting that a high-tech landscape like audience measurement needed to constantly evolve as newer consumption and distribution modes and technologies were emerging (for example, digital consumption, proliferation of OTT platforms, etc), BARC India has made it clear it was exploring SRPD, second generation metre with newer detection techniques, and other technological solutions for TV measurement.

“BARC India has also made progress in building capability to measure digital consumption with the goal of providing industry with cross platform and cross device video consumption: linear and time shifted, broadcast and digital. We have a strong foundation, established credibility and necessary transparency and accountability framework on which we can build further with emerging and suitable technologies,” the measurement organisation stated.

February 21, 2019
CNBC-TV18 emerges as india’s no. 1 english news channel

MUMBAI: This budget week, CNBC-TV18 demolished the competition and emerged as India’s no. 1 English news channel, ahead of the likes of Republic TV and Times Now (Source: BARC India | TG: NCCS AB Male 22yrs+ | Market: India | Period: Wk 5'19, Imp'000 & Market Share). In the English Business news genre, CNBC-TV18 led with a 58% market share, which was greater than the rest of the channels put together, cementing its reputation as India’s Budget Headquarters (Source: BARC India | TG: NCCS AB Male 22yrs+ | Market: India | Period: Wk 5'19, Imp'000 & Market Share).

For the past 19 years, CNBC-TV18 has been India’s premier business news destination. With its unwavering focus on quality content, the channel has always been the preferred choice on all business and economy-related news, dominating the English business news genre, with a 66% market share, on a week on week basis. (Source: BARC, TG: NCCS AB Male 22+, Market: All India (U+R), Period: Wk 45'18- 5'19),

Speaking on CNBC-TV18’s consistent superiority, Avinash Kaul, COO – Network 18 & Managing Director A+E Networks I TV18, said “Disseminating financial news that matters and impacts the people of this country is a task we take very seriously. For the past 19 years, CNBC-TV18 has retained its position as the undisputed leader and this Budget was no different. This exceptional performance is because of our quality content that is authentic and consumer friendly. Our audiences place immense trust in us and we intend on retaining it.”

February 8, 2019
TRAI extends deadline for comments on TV audience measurement consultation paper

MUMBAI: Telecom Regulatory Authority of India(TRAI) came out with a public consultation on various facets of TV audience measurement and how the existing system could be made more robust in December 2018. The regulatory body has now extended the deadline for the second time on the request of stakeholders.

The last date for receipt of written comments and counter-comments from the stakeholders has been extended up to 15 February and 28 February respectively. At the time of the release of the consultation paper, the last dates were 2 January and 16 January which were later extended up to 2 February and 16 February respectively.

Television audience measurement in India continues to remain one of the key subjects that evoke reactions from stakeholders. Given that advertising expenditures are typically guided by such data and in the wake of the matter being raised at various fora, TRAI came out with the consultation paper.

Telecom Authority of India (TRAI)’s move gains importance as stakeholders during meetings with the regulator, leading up to the present consultation, had conveyed that the present measurement system, spearheaded by a joint industry body Broadcast Audience Research Council India (BARC India), has done a credible job till now, but additional improvements could be made, including making data collection more robust and finding ways to curb panel infiltrations leading to possible manipulations. More so, as the industry has already invested in the present system over the past three years and it would be improper to try find alternate mechanisms at this juncture.

Keeping such views in mind, TRAI has raised issues relating to RPD(return path data) and whether set-top-boxes deployed in the country were technically adept at catching such figures — initiatives that would add to data robustness. The specific questions asked are: What percentage of STB supports transferring viewership data through establishing a reverse path/connection from STB? What will be the additional cost if existing STBs without return path are upgraded?

Asking whether regulatory tweaks were needed to reduce the impact of manipulation of measurement panels — an issue red-flagged by BARC India itself in an earlier consultation — TRAI has sought comments on the country-wide panel size and also the size of the individual panels in rural and urban areas.

The consultation paper highlights several such issues, including if BARC India, the organisation presently doing audience measurement, has been able to accomplish its purpose.

Industry observers said though the regulator may have raised pertinent issues, some of them could be answered by the stakeholders only if they decide to take a firm view on them. For example, TRAI asks whether the present sample size of bar-o-meters employed to collect data is adequate. The answer is, maybe no. But to increase the sample size, the stakeholders need to commit more financial investments and give BARC India the go-ahead — though annually some boxes are added to live up to promises made at the time Ministry of Information and Broadcasting green-lighted the BARC project.

The TRAI paper also seeks inputs from the stakeholders regarding shareholding/ownership pattern of BARC India and whether its credibility and neutrality can be enhanced further, while highlighting various methods of collating such data in other countries, including the US, the UK and France.

Some of the other issues highlighted in the TRAI paper are the following:

# Is there a need to promote competition in television rating services to ensure transparency, neutrality and fairness to give TAM rating?

# What regulatory initiatives/measures can be taken to make TV rating services more accurate and widely acceptable?

# Is the current audience measurement technique used by BARC apposite?

# Does broadcasting programmes that are out of their category or in different languages for some time during the telecast affect the TAM (TV audience measurement) rating? If so, what measures should be adopted to curb it?

# Can TV rating, based on limited panel homes, be termed as truly representative?

# What should be done to reduce the impact of manipulation of panel home data on overall TV ratings?

# What should be the panel size both in urban and rural India to give true representation of audience?

# What method/technology would help to rapidly increase the panel size for television audience measurement in India? What will be the commercial challenge in implementing such solutions?

# Should DPOs be mandated to facilitate collection of viewership data electronically, subject to consent of subscribers to increase data collection points for better TRPs?

# What percentage of STB supports transferring viewership data through establishing a reverse path/connection from STB? What will be the additional cost if existing STBs without return path are upgraded?

# What method should be adopted for privacy of individual information and to keep the individual information anonymous?

# What should be the level/granularity of information retrieved by the television audience measurement agency from the panel homes so that it does not violate principles of privacy?

# What measures need to be taken to address the issue of panel tampering/infiltration?

# Should BARC be permitted to provide raw level data to broadcasters? If yes, how secrecy of households, where the people meters are placed, can be maintained?

BARC India, set up in 2015, is a joint venture amongst broadcast and advertising industry bodies IBF, AAAI, ISA with Indian Broadcasting Foundation or IBF being a majority shareholder. India’s public broadcaster Prasar Bharati also sits on the BARC India board. Apart from TV audience data, BARC India is also exploring rolling out similar figures for digital platforms.

February 8, 2019
DD India enters English news top five in BARC week 3

MUMBAI: When all the private news broadcasters are contesting for the pole position in English news genre, pubcaster DD India has made a surprise entry in the third week of BARC India rating at second position. Zee News and News18 India saw some movement in their position in both Hindi News (U+R) and urban market.

English news

With the entry of DD India, all players, except Republic TV that maintained its top spot, moved down a slot which resulted in NDTV 24×7's exit from the top 5 list.

Week 3: Saturday, 12th January 2019 to Friday, 18th January 2019

English business news

The English business news genre saw no changes as always.

Hindi news (U+R)

Zee News dropped two slots to the fourth position compared to last week. News18 India and ABP News climbed a slot to second and third positions respectively.

Hindi news rural

The Hindi news (rural) genre saw no changes compared to previous week.

Hindi news urban

News18 India climbed two slots to the second position, whereas Zee News and India TV dropped to third and fourth spot respectively.

January 24, 2019
BARC India exhorts TRAI to ‘empower’ it as digital measurer

MUMBAI: In a smart move that could lead to further enhancing of its credibility and importance, Broadcast Audience Research Council India (BARC India) has exhorted Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) to “empower” it to be the uniform measurer of audience and other data related to TV, and OTT and digital platforms.

“BARC, which provides significant granular measurement data on television, if empowered by this Hon’ble authority, shall provide unbiased and accurate measurement data on contents broadcasted, streamed, re-transmitted, downloaded and shared in OTT platforms. The outcome of the above will lead to one single robust measurement report for television, OTT and digital platforms,” the Indian measurement organisation has said in its submission on TRAI’s consultation paper on regulatory framework for OTT communication services.

Interestingly, while BARC India’s commitment to roll out digital media measurement services Ekam is a work in progress, the present TRAI consultation paper is more focussed on OTT voice or communications services like WhatsApp, Facebook’s Messenger and similar Indian products like Hike. However, it must be made clear here that many of the over 80 submissions from diverse stakeholders, including big TV companies like Star India and Zee, do dwell on video OTT and possibilities relating to regulations.

Quoting from the Mobile Eco-system and Ad-sizing Report 2018 that highlights India has 250 million registered online video viewers, 100 million OTT viewers and that viewing of video content increased by 75 per cent in recent times, BARC India drives home the point if the contents streamed, viewed, retransmitted and downloaded on OTT services “are measured and rated” by it, “more transparency in the digital eco-system” would follow.

Highlighting the many strengths of the system and technology that the organisation presently employs and deploys, BARC India has submitted: “The OTT platforms prevail in the mobile and virtual worlds, which allow advertisers to easily and efficiently target well-defined groups or even individual consumers across various mediums…Hence, it is imminent to regulate, analyse and derive audience measurement system on OTT platforms.”

Although several global agencies like comScore, Nielsen, App Annie and SimilarWeb provide third-party analytics on OTT platforms, the Indian industry lacks a credible and neutral measurement agency, it has been contended. As digital ad spends increase gradually, proper data analytics will offer additional opportunity to advertisers and clients to compare the effectiveness of media spends amongst various distribution platforms.

BARC India, which has successfully set up a transparent, accurate, and inclusive TV audience measurement system that’s built upon a robust and future-ready technology backbone, while strengthening its case to measure and analyse the digital realm, has added the “big data and insights” generated by it presently powers “efficient media spends and content decisions” in a highly dynamic and growing television sector of India.

With a panel that is currently being scaled up to 180,000 individuals, BARC India is also the largest measurement company of its kind in the world.

January 14, 2019
TRAI extends deadline for comments on TV audience measurement overhaul

MUMBAI: Earlier this month Telecom Regulatory Authority of India(TRAI) came out with a public consultation on various facets of TV audience measurement and how the existing system could be made more robust. The regulatory body has now extended the deadline for receipt of comments and counter comments based on a request from stakeholders.

The last date for receipt of written comments and counter-comments from the stakeholders has been extended to 2 February and 16 February respectively. At the time of the release of the consultation paper, the last dates were 2 January and 16 January.

Television audience measurement in India continues to remain one of the key subjects that evoke reactions from stakeholders. Given that advertising expenditures are typically guided by such data and, in the wake of the matter being raised at various fora, TRAI came out with the consultation paper.

Telecom Authority of India (TRAI)’s move gains importance as stakeholders during meetings with the regulator, leading up to the present consultation, had conveyed that the present measurement system, spearheaded by a joint industry body Broadcast Audience Research Council India (BARC India), has done a credible job till now, but additional improvements could be made, including making data collection more robust and finding ways to curb panel infiltrations leading to possible manipulations. More so as the industry has already invested in the present system over the past three years and it would be improper to try find alternate mechanisms at this juncture.

Keeping such views in mind, TRAI has raised issues relating to RPD(return path data) and whether set-top-boxes deployed in the country were technically adept at catching such figures — initiatives that would add to data robustness. The specific questions asked is: What percentage of STB supports transferring viewership data through establishing a reverse path/connection from STB? What will be the additional cost if existing STBs without return path are upgraded?

Asking whether regulatory tweaks were needed to reduce the impact of manipulation of measurement panels — an issue red-flagged by BARC India itself in an earlier consultation — TRAI has sought comments on the country-wide panel size and also the size of the individual panels in rural and urban areas.

The consultation paper highlights several such issues, including if BARC India, the organisation presently doing audience measurement, has been able to accomplish its purpose.

Industry observers said though the regulator may have raised pertinent issues, some of them could be answered by the stakeholders only if they decide to take a firm view on them. For example, TRAI asks whether the present sample size of bar-o-meters employed to collect data is adequate. The answer is, maybe no. But to increase the sample size, the stakeholders need to commit more financial investments and give BARC India the go-ahead — though annually some boxes are added to live up to promises made at the time Ministry of Information and Broadcasting green-lighted the BARC project.

The TRAI paper also seeks inputs from the stakeholders regarding shareholding/ownership pattern of BARC India and whether its credibility and neutrality can be enhanced further, while highlighting various methods of collating such data in other countries, including the US, the UK and France.

Some of the other issues highlighted in the TRAI paper are the following:

# Is there a need to promote competition in television rating services to ensure transparency, neutrality and fairness to give TAM rating?

# What regulatory initiatives/measures can be taken to make TV rating services more accurate and widely acceptable?

# Is the current audience measurement technique used by BARC apposite?

# Does broadcasting programmes that are out of their category or in different languages for some time during the telecast affect the TAM (TV audience measurement) rating? If so, what measures should be adopted to curb it?

# Can TV rating, based on limited panel homes, be termed as truly representative?

# What should be done to reduce the impact of manipulation of panel home data on overall TV ratings?

# What should be the panel size both in urban and rural India to give true representation of audience?

# What method/technology would help to rapidly increase the panel size for television audience measurement in India? What will be the commercial challenge in implementing such solutions?

# Should DPOs be mandated to facilitate collection of viewership data electronically, subject to consent of subscribers to increase data collection points for better TRPs?

# What percentage of STB supports transferring viewership data through establishing a reverse path/connection from STB? What will be the additional cost if existing STBs without return path are upgraded?

# What method should be adopted for privacy of individual information and to keep the individual information anonymous?

# What should be the level/granularity of information retrieved by the television audience measurement agency from the panel homes so that it does not violate principles of privacy?

# What measures need to be taken to address the issue of panel tampering/infiltration?

# Should BARC be permitted to provide raw level data to broadcasters? If yes, how secrecy of households, where the people meters are placed, can be maintained?

BARC India, set up in 2015, is a joint venture amongst broadcast and advertising industry bodies IBF, AAAI, ISA with Indian Broadcasting Foundation or IBF being a majority shareholder. India’s public broadcaster Prasar Bharati also sits on the BARC India board. Apart from TV audience data, BARC India is also exploring rolling out similar figures for digital platforms.

December 28, 2018
BARC India seeks Paradigm Shift in Audience Measurement Technology

MUMBAI: In a bid to seek Next Gen technology solutions to better meet the needs of TV audience measurement in India, Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) India has partnered with Indian Institute of Technology (IIT). The partnership is also in line with BARC India’s philosophy of providing robust TV viewership measurement to the country of 197 million TV homes.

As part of the partnership, IITians across the country were asked to suggest newer ways of measuring TV viewership habits of 836 million TV owning individuals. The solutions BARC India was seeking included newer methods for channel, content and ad identification as well as alternative to button pushing and current visible meter used for capturing viewership data from panel homes.

10 IITs from across the country participated in the competition and presented their solutions to a jury.

After a rigorous evaluation process, IIT Kharagpur’s T.Y.S.S. Santosh won the Gold prize and a summer internship with BARC India for coming up with the best solution. The proposed solution can potentially transform large conspicuous hardware in panel homes to user-friendly smart assistants, and also reduce dependency on 3rd parties for channel identification. IIT Kanpur bagged the Silver and IIT Bombay was placed third with a Bronze.

All solutions presented by the students are platform agnostic and will be further tested for their feasibility. If proven, the solution would be adopted into the system to enhance the measurement service.

Emphasizing on this collaborative approach with the sharpest minds in India for Next Gen technology solutions, BARC India COO Romil Ramgarhia said, “Indian TV industry is dynamic and its needs are ever-evolving. India faces several unique issues such as power cuts, data connectivity challenges, wide disparity in temperature and climatic conditions etc., all of which impact collection of data. It thus is important for us to keep innovating and thinking ahead.”

“We are delighted to see the young and bright minds from the most premier technology institute of India coming up with some extra-ordinary solutions. Through this partnership, we also want to encourage students to take technology from research labs to end users, impacting a million lives,” added Ramgarhia.

Sharing his experience on winning the coveted Gold prize, T.Y.S.S. Santosh (final year student IIT Kharagpur) said, “We are happy to be the Gold winners in the battle between all IITs in this tough competition. BARC India’s challenging case study demanded working on inter-disciplinary components of tech that is hardware, software, machine learning and artificial intelligence to propose a new solution to the existing state of the art technology available with BARC India.”

“We are obliged to BARC India for offering us summer internships and look forward to be a part of this Great Place to Work and technologically-driven company – BARC India. We are looking forward to work on our proposed technology in a cross functional setup of teams,” concluded Santosh.

December 27, 2018
BARC INDIA AWARDED MOST INNOVATIVE COMPANY 2018

MUMBAI: BARC India bagged the “Most Innovative Company in Service – Medium Enterprise Category” at the CII Industrial Innovations 2018 awards. Apart from that, the company has also been recognized as one of the ‘Top 25 Most Innovative Companies in India’. The announcement was made in a grand ceremony of the 5th CII Industrial Innovation Awards 2018 held in New Delhi on 3rd Dec 2018.

The Industrial Innovation Awards identify and celebrate innovative Indian enterprises across various sectors. The award has been instituted by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), and is one of the most coveted innovation awards in India.

The winners have been decided after a 4-stage process, spanning across 8 months. This also included an assessor visit to understand BARC India’s robust technology set up on the back of some path-breaking innovations and a presentation in front of an eminent Jury.

The award is a validation of the rigorous and credible measurement system that BARC India has established in a short span of 3 years. With its robust methodology and constant Tech innovations, BARC India has developed a world class system for the TV industry. It can also be recalled that BARC India’s BAR-O-Meters were developed indigenously at 1/6th the cost of globally available meters. This ensured scalability as well as ensured that the meters could handle the weather/power/telecom fluctuations which is unique to the Indian market.

The other innovation which has helped BARC India achieve the status of Most Innovative Companies is the Panel Management System (PMS). This indigenously developed system has helped in bringing efficiency in the field force that installs, manages and trains the panel homes. This has played an important role in ensuring reporting from the panel homes at par with global standards.

The third innovation is the BIO suite of products which is a visualization tool that provides interactive UI, 90% reduction in output time and helps in faster and better decision making.

“BARC India was set up with the aim to give the industry a measurement system that it deserved, and this could not have happened without having a strong technology backbone. The team at BARC India has been able to give the industry a technology marvel which is capable of providing the industry a representative data that helps them take better business decisions. The CII Industrial Innovation Award is proof of the great work done by the team,” said Shashi Sinha, BARC India Technical Committee Chairman and CEO, IPG Mediabrands.

BARC India Chairman Nakul Chopra added, “BARC India has been a key-change agent in the viewership measurement space, and its initiatives have already started to redefine the industry. Since its inception, BARC India has tackled several challenges. But, considering we work in a dynamic industry, these challenges are never-ending. The key to success is to constantly keep innovating and be the change-maker. BARC India has been successful in doing so. We are now looking at implementing some key future projects such as Unified Video Measurement and Return Path Data, which will bring another paradigm shift in the industry.”

“In future, technology will disrupt every single business, be it Cement, Retail, Telecomm, E-Comm or Media. It is therefore important to keep pace with the changing technology. As is said, in tomorrow’s world, the big fish will not eat the small fish, but a fast fish will eat the slow one. We at BARC India firmly believe that innovation is imperative and not a choice. We also believe that it is important to be the fearless first to inspire change and not be a mere follower. I am delighted to see that our efforts have been recognized by CII. We shall continue to empower the industry with our robust measurement,” said BARC India CEO Partho Dasgupta.

December 10, 2018
TRAI directs DPOs to remove TV channels from landing page

NEW DELHI: The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on Monday directed all distributors of TV channels and broadcasters to restrain with immediate effect from placing registered television channel, whose TV rating is released by ratings agency, on the landing page or the boot-up screen.

The reason behind this order, according to TRAI, was to protect the interest of service providers and consumers while ensuring “orderly growth of the sector”.

Though the TRAI diktat comes into effect immediately, the regulator has given some breather to stakeholders to become fully compliant by 31 March 2019 by making necessary changes in agreements that may have been already signed. However, distributors and TV channels have been asked to revert to the regulator with updates within seven days.

Landing channel or landing page or landing logical channel number (LCN) refers to the default LCN that is displayed whenever a STB is switched on. TV channel placed on this page is available to all STBs connected to the network of a distributor and is regarded as a prized real estate by DPOs.

During a consultation process on the issue, many broadcasters had admitted that placing a TV channel on the landing page could influence the audience data or TV rating points (TRPs), while MSOs and other distributors had stated there were no such influence on ratings or if any, they were minimal.

TRPs, according to TRAI, indicate the popularity of a programme or a TV channel by providing information about the television watching habit (for example, time spent by a viewer on a particular TV channel) of viewers from different socio-economic backgrounds. In an environment that prevails in India, despite digitisation of TV services, advertisers and corporate media planners still depend on TRPs while budgeting media spend on television.

The issue of landing page had cropped on when some stakeholders cried foul over a year back and the regulator had been forced to issue interim orders, which were challenged at the disputes tribunal TDSAT. Ministry of Information and Broadcasting too had directed BARC India , collators of audience data, to desist from including data from landing page channels for its overall weekly figures.

December 4, 2018
TRAI seeks stakeholders’ inputs on audience measurement overhaul

MUMBAI: Television audience measurement in India continues to remain one of the key subjects that evoke reactions from stakeholders. Given that advertising expenditures are typically guided by such data and, in the wake of the matter being raised at various fora, TRAI has come out with a public consultation on various facets of TV audience measurement and how the existing system could be made more robust.

Telecom Authority of India (TRAI)’s move gains importance as stakeholders during meetings with the regulator, leading up to the present consultation, had conveyed that the present measurement system, spearheaded by a joint industry body Broadcast Audience Research Council India (BARC India), has done a credible job till now, but additional improvements could be made, including making data collection more robust and finding ways to curb panel infiltrations leading to possible manipulations. More so as the industry has already invested in the present system over the past three years and it would be improper to try find alternate mechanisms at this juncture.

Keeping such views in mind, TRAI has raised issues relating to RPD(return path data) and whether set-top-boxes deployed in the country were technically adept at catching such figures — initiatives that would add to data robustness. The specific questions asked is: What percentage of STB supports transferring viewership data through establishing a reverse path/connection from STB? What will be the additional cost if existing STBs without return path are upgraded?

Asking whether regulatory tweaks were needed to reduce the impact of manipulation of measurement panels — an issue red-flagged by BARC India itself in an earlier consultation — TRAI has sought comments on the country-wide panel size and also the size of the individual panels in rural and urban areas.

The consultation paper highlights several such issues, including if BARC India, the organisation presently doing audience measurement, has been able to accomplish its purpose.

Industry observers said though the regulator may have raised pertinent issues, some of them could be answered by the stakeholders only if they decide to take a firm view on them. For example, TRAI asks whether the present sample size of bar-o-meters employed to collect data is adequate. The answer is, maybe no. But to increase the sample size, the stakeholders need to commit more financial investments and give BARC India the go-ahead — though annually some boxes are added to live up to promises made at the time Ministry of Information and Broadcasting green-lighted the BARC project.

The TRAI paper also seeks inputs from the stakeholders regarding shareholding/ownership pattern of BARC India and whether its credibility and neutrality can be enhanced further, while highlighting various methods of collating such data in other countries, including the US, the UK and France.

Some of the other issues highlighted in the TRAI paper are the following:

# Is there a need to promote competition in television rating services to ensure transparency, neutrality and fairness to give TAM rating?

# What regulatory initiatives/measures can be taken to make TV rating services more accurate and widely acceptable?

# Is the current audience measurement technique used by BARC apposite?

# Does broadcasting programmes that are out of their category or in different languages for some time during the telecast affect the TAM (TV audience measurement) rating? If so, what measures should be adopted to curb it?

# Can TV rating, based on limited panel homes, be termed as truly representative?

# What should be done to reduce the impact of manipulation of panel home data on overall TV ratings?

# What should be the panel size both in urban and rural India to give true representation of audience?

# What method/technology would help to rapidly increase the panel size for television audience measurement in India? What will be the commercial challenge in implementing such solutions?

# Should DPOs be mandated to facilitate collection of viewership data electronically, subject to consent of subscribers to increase data collection points for better TRPs?

# What percentage of STB supports transferring viewership data through establishing a reverse path/connection from STB? What will be the additional cost if existing STBs without return path are upgraded?

# What method should be adopted for privacy of individual information and to keep the individual information anonymous?

# What should be the level/granularity of information retrieved by the television audience measurement agency from the panel homes so that it does not violate principles of privacy?

# What measures need to be taken to address the issue of panel tampering/infiltration?

# Should BARC be permitted to provide raw level data to broadcasters? If yes, how secrecy of households, where the people meters are placed, can be maintained?

BARC India, set up in 2015, is a joint venture amongst broadcast and advertising industry bodies IBF, AAAI, ISA with Indian Broadcasting Foundation or IBF being a majority shareholder. India’s public broadcaster Prasar Bharati also sits on the BARC India board. Apart from TV audience data, BARC India is also exploring rolling out similar figures for digital platforms.

December 3, 2018