Government, leave BARC alone!

By A Correspondent

The all-important inauguration of FICCI-Frames 2016 on Wednesday was marred by a sweeping statement by telecom minister Ravi Shankar Prasad. Minister Prasad is known to have strong views on measurement in the past too.

Understandable. He has been I&B Minister in the past, and coincidentally his sister Anuradha Prasad runs BAG Films which runs the channels News TV and E24.

Prasad said he wasn’t happy with the performance of TAM in the past and the alternative right now.  We really don’t know why he said that. It’s not that people have not had issues with BARC data. People have had, and the BARC team has cleared the air, and also corrected things if and when needed. One can be sure that BARC Chairman Punit Goenka must have faced some opposition within the Zee group when his channels didn’t fare too well in the first weeks of data releasing. But did he delay the release of the numbers? He didn’t.

Evidently the telecom minister doesn’t agree with the I&B minister who is reported to be happy with the performance of BARC.

We asked BARC CEO Partho Dasgupta for a comment on the minister’s statement. And this is what he said:

“We believe the Hon’ble Minister expressed a view on improvements and changes in TV audience measurement in India with the launch of BARC India’s services.

BARC India strictly follows government guidelines on the matter. We have expanded the coverage – with a doubling of sample homes to 20000 within the first year of launch, and inclusion of rural India for the first time ever. We have plans for expanding the panel as per government guidelines too.

We are a Joint Industry Body and the number of meters are guided by Industry’s affordability and statistical needs. The number is as agreed by all stakeholders of the industry. Industry has welcomed and accepted BARC India data’s robustness and fidelity.”

Frankly, we don’t think BARC must toe the government line. That it is following the guidelines is a bonus. The government has no role in television audience measurement.  Remember, the measurement is done for the benefit of a channel’s content and business teams to understand its viewers and more importantly by advertisers and media agencies who invest loads of advertising $$$s. If the broadcasters and advertisers don’t have a problem, why should the government poke its nose?