New Delhi: Ministry of Information and Broadcasting on Wednesday asked the Broadcast (Barc) Audience Research Council, which was responsible for measuring TV viewers in India, to immediately release television rating points (TRP) for the news channel.
The ministry command also said that the TRP data, hereinafter, will be calculated on a four-week rolling average.
In addition, he formed a working group together with stakeholders from industries and the government on board and asked them to produce specifications and protocols to utilize data on the return path of the set-top box when handling privacy issues that appear as a result.
Effectively, the order sets rolling balls to release trp data for the news channel after hiatus 15 months since October 2020, when Barc stopped publishing data behind ‘trp scam’ which was excavated by Mumbai police, and which refers to “fraudulent” manipulation from trs with Three channels – TV republic, marathi and cinema boxes.
The government then established a four member committee led by Prasar Chief Executive Bharati Shashi Shekhar Vempati to review ‘Guidelines at television ranking institutions in India’ and who recommended in their reports that it must be made mandatory to universify the collection of viewers information using the ‘return path data’ technology (RPD).
In the order of Wednesday, the Ministry of I & B said that considering the recommendations of the report submitted by the Indian TRP Committee and Telecommunications Authority, Barc had “revised in the process, protocol, supervision mechanism, and changes in governance structures etc.” The order added that because Barc has rearranged “board and technical committees to enable independent induction of independent members”, the permanent supervision committee has been formed, and the access protocol for data has been changed and tightened, barc reaches related to related.
Constituents to explain new proposals and are ready to start the release of ranking according to the new protocol.
As a result, the Ministry asked the Barc to release news rating “with direct effects and also to release data in the past three months, for the genre in a monthly format, for a fair and fair true trend representation”.
Under the new system, news reporting and niche genre, which has a smaller sample size makes it vulnerable to fraud, will be on the “concept of four-week rolling average”, the ministry said.
The Work Group with Vempati-LED will now consider if the RPD capability can be used to measure Trps and will send a report in four months.
“The Group can study global best practices in RPD, such as Canada, Models / Pilots conducted in India by Barc and other independent experiments by DTH operators and other stakeholders and formulating mandates to combine data sources including RPD, if it is decided with the existing sampling methodology ( IES), “Ministry order said.