BARC India resumes ratings for individual news channels; launches Augmented Data Reporting Standards

• BARC had temporarily paused the reporting of individual channel audience estimates for all News channels on October 15, 2020 w.e.f. Week 40.
• The Technical Committee (TechComm), working along with the BARC team, was tasked to review and augment the existing standards of measuring and reporting audience estimates of News and Special Interest genres and to come up with a scientific and acceptable solution to improve their robustness
• BARC India has resumed the ratings for individual news channels with the release of data for Week 10, 2022 today.

Following an industry-wide consultative process, the BARC Team, along with the BARC TechComm, developed the Augmented Data Reporting Standards for News and Special Interest genres, aligned with the industry’s needs. As per these revised approved standards, audience estimates for these genres will only be released based on a 4-week rolling average, every week.

A level playing field has been ensured for all channels within the BARC ecosystem with a single YUMI login access to the audience estimates. There is also no change in the weekly data release cadence – which enables seamless planning.

BARC India will also release data for the previous 13 weeks, i.e., for the period of Week 49, 2021 to Week 9, 2022, only for the channels that have not chosen to opt out from receiving this data, which will also be based on a 4-week rolling average. This data will be released over the next 3 working days.