Under the revised system, the reporting of news and niche genres will be on a ‘four-week rolling average concept’. The MIB has also told BARC to release the last three months’ data for the genre in a monthly format for fair and equitable representation of true trends. “The actual roll-out of rating data might not happen so soon as is being anticipated as there are technicalities involved. The first set of fresh data will come only after four weeks. It might take at least 8-10 weeks for the first set of data to come out,” a senior executive with a leading news network said on the condition of anonymity.TV news ad sales executives say that the delay in publishing data will mean that the news channels will not be able to take advantage of news data resumption during the assembly election period. The results of the five state assembly elections will be announced on 10th March. ‘If the data roll-out gets delayed by eight weeks or beyond then the news genre will not be able to capitalise on the resumption of news data. In the absence of data, the news channels, particularly the smaller ones, had got severely impacted,” a senior ad sales executive with a leading network said.However, there are some in the industry who assert that there is no reason to postpone the release of news ratings as BARC is already gathering data for the genre. “BARC is already collecting data, so there is no reason to postpone it. If the data is ready for publishing there is absolutely no case to postpone it now,” a veteran media executive said.
A top official from a news broadcasting company said that BARC India cannot stop the release of data beyond a point as the MIB has asked them to publish news data with immediate effect. “Technically, there shouldn’t be any problem as BARC is ready with the data. They have to start publishing the data based on a four-week rolling average,” the official said.The veteran media executive quoted above also said that the MIB’s orders are legally not binding on BARC. “MIB doesn’t own BARC. BARC is an independent organisation that has been set up by three industry bodies. This notion that the government should have veto power on BARC is nonsensical,” he added. However, BARC not abiding by MIB is highly unlikely.
