BARC India to resume publishing of individual news channel rating from Week 10, 2022, will release data on March 17, 2022

• Ratings by Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) will resume the release of data for individual News channels.
• The ratings were suspended after a racket involving a private channel’s efforts to tamper the ratings was busted by the Mumbai police in 2020.

BARC India, and the industry at large, welcomes the Ministry of I&B’s directive to resume the release of data for individual News channels. The data will be released as per the Augmented Data Reporting Standards for News and Special Interest genres.

BARC India is currently working towards ensuring the seamless release of individual news channel data and intends to commence release with effect from our reporting Week 10, 2022. As per its reporting cycle, this data will be released to the market on Thursday, March 17 2022.

The Augmented Standards entail the reporting of audience estimates for News and Special Interest genre channels on a 4-week rolling average basis, which would be released regularly every week along with the estimates for all other channels. All viewership data will be published on the same YUMI platform that all our subscribers use.

In the weeks leading up to the resumption of news channels ratings, BARC India will be reaching out to its constituents to sufficiently inform and educate them about the details of the Augmented Data Reporting Standards.

"With the active support of the Technical Committee members, all our stakeholders and industry experts, we believe we have a statistically sound and effective solution which helps augment the robustness of the data and reporting, which we had set out to do. This would be another significant step taken by BARC India to ensure a strong currency for advertisers and media organisations," BARC said in its media statement.